The Point at Which it Breaks
by sugarbucket
Summary: A three piece follow up to Breaking Points as requested by many. How long can secrets really endure under the pressure of obsession? Set in 2033, this is the point at which it finally breaks.
1. Chapter 1: Pressure Behind a Fracture

This began as a one-shot and has evolved to a thing with chapters. Feels pretty typical at this point.

So, by request here I have a short (ish?) three piece addition to my Breaking Points verse because apparently Rosalie and Edward have a lot of time on their hands, being immortal and all, and consequently refuse to leave me alone.

This doesn't have to considered Breaking Points canonif you don't like it – I must stress that not everyone is going to like this, I think. So therefore if you read and think, "_Noooooo_!" then you can disregard it entirely. Really, it's just me enjoying writing my favourite couple again. It is what I think would have inevitably happened in this story, given enough time but as I said – if you don't like it, please feel free to ignore it from the BP verse. That said, I hope everyone else enjoys it and I have a pretty good idea of which people will enjoy it (you know who you are) and take it in the BP spirit it was intended; all soul crushing angst and doomed love.

I promised this about seventy nine years ago, so it's bit late, but hey I've posted later!

This is what I came up with.

Bex.

* * *

**-The Point at Which it Breaks-**

**-Chapter One: Pressure Behind a Fracture-**

_'Gargoyles standing at the front of your gate.  
Trying to tell me to wait,  
But I can't wait to see you.  
So I run like I'm mad to heaven's door.  
I don't wanna be bad,  
I won't cheat you no more.  
Roses, Bel Air, take me there,  
I've been waiting to meet you.  
Palm trees in the light,  
I can sleep late at night  
Darling, I'm waiting to greet you,  
Come to me, baby._

_-Lana Del Rey_

-**Edward **-

_Everett, Washington._

_2033_

I had always considered myself to be something more than what I was now. Really, that went without saying at this point but there was time to fill so why not say it? Why not waste a few more seconds and postpone the reality that waited patiently before me. True, it was not the first time I had witnessed such a hellish display but that made it no easier to bear.

This was hell and there was a dress code. I really _had_ always considered myself more than _this_ at the very least. Standing in a church, wearing Armani and an utterly false smile as I watched my daughter marry Jacob Black. _Again_.

They had chosen a church ceremony yet again; big and lavish. Black had insisted on paying for it himself with his money from his Auto Repair Workshop which he had ingeniously named, _'Blacks' _. It was something he was very impressed with. We had all worked hard to feign approval and interest. Some people had had to work harder than others, of course.

Best not to chance looking over there, I thought. Bella was right next to me, after all.

"...know any reasons why these two should not be wed?"

Though I knew no-one would say anything, I was tense. Determinedly _not l_ooking in that direction, I waited to see if the silence would remain and it did. Of course it did. Still, one could never be too sure with...certain people.

"Then I now pronounce you, Husband and Wife!"

Again. I smiled and clapped along with everyone else; to all the world a proud brother, to eight of my family a proud father and to one who was never fooled by anything I said or did, a despondent man forced to cheer for a marriage I would never be easy with, wearing a façade that grew thinner and tighter with each passing day.

She had heard me, I felt it. Her recognition of my sentiments rippled through me; a soft reverberation of sorts. Inevitably, my eyes were drawn to hers. She wasn't looking at me of course. She too was clapping and smiling, with notably less enthusiasm than everyone else, but from her it was expected. She wore pale gold, her hair long and wavy and her eyes were dancing in the soft candlelight.

Rosalie. _My_ Rosalie. Mine.

_'Don't stare,'_ she warned me gently. _'You'll cause a scene.' _Her voice echoed softly in the chambers of my mind. Ordinarily a warning such as that could be interpreted as playful, flirtatious even. But there was an edge of desperate longing and frustrated impatience thrumming through her. It ran through me also. She would never usually risk speaking to me like this in front of others. Honestly, it was a necessary warning because as each day passed I felt increasingly reckless.

Nessie and Jacob were walking down the aisle together, arm in arm laughing and kissing; the very picture of young love. Bella was saying something that I knew only required a kiss and a smile as an answer. I obliged because we were married and I loved her, but my mind was now firmly elsewhere, imagining...causing a scene.

_I would cross the small space between us in front of everyone we knew and many people we did not. I would pull her towards me, bask momentarily in the sheer bliss of being allowed to simply touch her. The ridiculous pleasure the mere feel of her skin would bring and then the sheer opulence of bringing her lips to mine, a place they seemed to belong and each moment spent denying that fact was useless and cumbersome. The gasp I would elicit from her, the sweet rush of fear and adrenaline and lust that would cause her eyes to flutter right before she would give in and reach for me in turn. _

_'Stop it!'_ she insisted, but it was more like begging than anything else. I felt the warm desire rolling off her in waves, the danger and recklessness both infuriating and exciting her.

The anticipation was understandably immense. It had been nineteen months since last I had forged time to be with Rosalie and tomorrow was the result of our hard work, patience and careful planning. Tonight, a crisis would occur that could only be solved my Rosalie and Jasper. I would volunteer to go along as well. Emmett would offer to go along, Rosalie would accept. There would be an argument between Rosalie and Emmett tomorrow just before we were to leave. Emmett would stay behind, Rosalie would storm away. Jasper would spend a few days making the streets of New York safer for women and other vulnerable people. Rosalie and I would spend that time _together_ in every sense of the word.

Our bodies and minds were in utter unison of impatience and expectation. I couldn't help myself...I brushed my index finger along her wrist as we left the church together. No one else noticed I was sure, but it sent a shock wave through her that echoed within me for the rest of the day.

_'Not much longer,'_ she told herself and consequently me. I could only share the sentiment.

* * *

There were three houses between us all. The biggest one, the one I thought of as home, was of course where Carlisle and Esme lived along with Emmett, Rosalie, Bella and myself. The second house was much smaller, only for Jasper and Alice who found that in the last five years or so, they had become very fond of privacy. The newest house wasn't as small or as nice, but it backed on to a huge, dense forest. This was Nessie's and Jacob's house; necessary for Jacob to transform once a day and have room to bound and run, should he desire it. Renesme enjoyed the novelty of her own house and space away from Bella and myself. Jacob _loved_ the novelty and I sensed would pursue it forever from now on, no matter where we moved to next.

We had two more years in Everett before we had to leave America altogether for at least the next fifty years. Truthfully, there were only so many dark, rainy places to live in America before you started coming back around on yourself. Everyone except Jacob was in favour of moving to England; privately, I hoped this meant that he would decline altogether but that meant that we would be deprived of Nessie altogether and that would never do.

Still, I liked this house. The last American house for quite some time. The living situation was such that it reminded me of a time before Alice and Jasper had ever come to us, and certainly before Children of the Moon had become extended family. I enjoyed it.

Not to say that we didn't see each other every day, because we did. Bella, Alice and Renesme attended the local Tech Institute together and we always spent time together whenever we could. Alice worked in the local community theatre and Jasper sometimes went with her. Carlisle had opened up his own practise with the assistance of Esme. Emmett and Rosalie did their own thing, which meant nothing so tied down. Rosalie was always very clever with money and as such had little need or compulsion to find something career wise. She was arguably the one best able to cope with the pressing issue of time and how slowly it moved. The trick, she had told me once, was not rushing things. Bella, Jacob and Renesme were still fairly new to this and found it difficult, trying to fill each day best they could with tasks, projects and general busyness. Emmett occasionally helped out at _Black's_ and gave Alice a hand with set building. Mostly, he was content to be with Rosalie and the rest of us.

I found myself in a similar situation. There seemed to be no point in putting down roots when I knew we were leaving. Rosalie and I also found ourselves unable to cope with any more school. We wore slightly more adult clothes and passed for twenty year olds. _Just_. I had little interest in further education, especially when it was something I knew back to front.

That was how we lived. Or at least how everyone else lived; I seemed to be surviving and only barely. The things everyone else concerned themselves with were nothing more to me than passing amusements. I had no time for them, no energy to build and maintain them. In fact, most things seemed distant and useless lately. Everything except time with Rosalie. That was all I thought about, all I wanted. If could dream, it would have been all I dreamed about. I spent most of the day and night imagining being with her, sometimes very riskily reaching out to her mind and sharing these thoughts with her. Rarely, she reciprocated and on those rare time – when we were always surrounded by others – it would feel as though the world had fallen away and we were alone. I could almost touch her with my thoughts; feel her, smell her, taste her.

It was undoubtedly dangerous, but it was difficult to work up the energy to care when I could hear her sighing softly in my mind.

It would all be worth it, all the waiting. Tomorrow it would be for real; no more imagining.

* * *

**-Rosalie-**

When it finally stopped, I prayed to God to let me be dead now. Was there anything worse in Hell or on Earth than having to listen to the people you consider parents having uncharacteristically loud sex four rooms down? Silence prevailed for two minutes and I took the opportunity to flee the house as fast as possible. There were some things immortal brains could _not_ withstand.

It was a beautiful night, anyway. Crisp, clear and obviously chilly though the icy air felt more like a lukewarm caress to my freezing skin. I was alone, for once. The '_Newly_' Weds were on their honeymoon. Emmett, Alice and Jasper were hunting while Edward and Bella had gone to see a film. A purposeful attempt at giving Esme and Carlisle privacy on their anniversary and I had been about to make my own plans when the sex had begun, quite unexpectedly. Perhaps they'd thought I had already left. Either way, I was glad for the solitude. There was so much happening in my mind, such turmoil and fire.

I decided not to take my car and simply walk around for a while. Again, the solitude was refreshing and with little else but the sound of my own footfalls, I was more relaxed than I had been in over a year.

I suspected that this decade was going to be a troublesome one for me. Occasionally, I went through periods of continuous depression that lasted far too long. This was usually what it felt like at the start of one. I felt bad even admitting this to myself for there was no real reason for this depression. Any person would say my life was ideal. Happy, coupled off family. Immortality. Youth. Money. Everything.

Everything except the one thing that mattered, of course.

Having sensed my thoughts, he tentatively reached out to me from where he sat cuddled with Bella in the movie theatre. It was only a weak connection; a mere shadow of what it could be were he closer. He gave me a gentle, telepathic version of a kiss on the cheek. It made my skin feel too hot all of a sudden and while I appreciated the gesture, it was not helpful.

_'One more day, love,'_ he promised fiercely. _'Just one more day.'_

But days were meaningless slots of time to me and I was sick of them. Days, weeks, months and then the true hell of years. _Years_.

_'I'm fairly certain we all know that you have a problem with time, Rose,' _ mocked playfully. _'You might have mentioned it a couple of times.'_

_'I'm so sick of it!'_ I snapped, feeling him flinch back a little at the unexpected level of anger. _'I can't stand waiting around to be near you without having to worry if and when someone's going to come bursting in!'_

She was thinking, as I was, of the time nine years ago when we had been kissing with reckless abandon against my car in the garage and Black had come bounding in all of a sudden. We had pushed apart _just_ in time, but I had seen the look in his eyes. Suspicion. It was the closest we had come yet to being discovered and despite the abject horror of it, I could not recall the incident without the tiniest of thrills; bitter-sweet and dark, demanding fulfilment. Because if we had been seen, then it would all be over. Everyone would know and there would be hell to pay but it would be something_ new, _something different from the monotony of every day life and endless days with no sleep. Endless chatter and games, endless small town crap. Endless everything, broken up by the rare and ever decreasing times I could be with Edward; the counterpart to my soul, the entirety of my existence and everything I loved, craved and needed.

_'There's no need to wax quite _that_ poetic, Rose,'_ he chided. _'You'll be fine come tomorrow night.'_

He was right. I knew he was right. Tomorrow night everything would be as it should be. It didn't ring quite as true as it should have, though. I was so _desperate _ to be with him, just to touch him as he had brazenly touched me in the church. I wished he was close so I could attempt something similar but he was too far away, cuddling up to Bella and some mediocre romance film.

I wrapped my arms around myself, vaguely pretending it was him and forced myself to be _patient_.

* * *

The play was set. Really, we had gone to quite extraordinary lengths to arrange this; even going so far as to recruit a friend of Jasper's to the cause. The cause being that we three had less than honourable deeds to commit elsewhere in the shroud of secrecy. This was what life had been reduced to; lies and legerdemain. Only a few times before had we actually been this desperate to attempt such a daring deception before.

I was with Carlisle and Alice when the call came through to Jasper. I had to hand it to him; he really was a masterful liar.

"What do you mean?" he asked quietly in the next room. "How? God damn it, Isaac! We have been through this a hundred times and you _cannot_ just call whenever you've messed up!"

Alice gave a surprised little sigh. "Oh," she said. "You're going away."

Carlisle frowned slightly. "Hmm?"

"Rosalie," Alice clarified. "Rosalie, Edward and Jasper. They're all going to help Isaac."

Yes we were. We _were_ all going to help Isaac and we all believed it very much. If we didn't believe it, Alice might see something different. It had taken many years to work out the kinks in her visions and foresight but we had as good a roadmap as we were ever going to have. Actually believing you were going to do it, while repressing the truth to the far regions of your mind seemed to work most of the time. _Most_ of the time. We were usually working on the belief that if what we were doing didn't change the course we were headed down anyway, then she wouldn't see it. Very rarely, it didn't work like that.

This didn't seem to be one of those times.

"I am?" I asked, sounding surprised. "Why?"

Alice was staring off into the distance. Carlisle and I waited patiently for her to come back.

"Isaac has killed some people. He needs Jasper's help in cleaning up the mess. It was an accident, apparently."

Ten seconds later Jasper came in looking grim.

"Isaac has killed some people. He needs my help in cleaning up the mess. It was an accident, _apparently,"_ he said. Carlisle and I smiled at his perfect repetition of Alice's prediction, while Alice herself continued to be fascinated by whatever she was seeing.

"Where is he?" I asked.

"Lockport, New York."

"That's...near Rochester," I said with subtle hesitation.

Jasper gave a serious nod. "Yes, I know. Look, I wouldn't ask but you know the area. You and Edward actually. I could really use some help with this. It's more than a couple of people and he's in a highly populated area. It's going to be difficult to manage, let alone clean up."

"I know the area too," Carlisle offered unexpectedly. "I could go."

"Would you mind?" I said, thinking fast. "If it's not much trouble, I'd rather you go than me and...but the surgery. Carlisle, you're seeing to the Reddington girl, aren't you?"

A young girl named Caroline Reddington had recently undergone a very unprofessional abortion and refused to go to a hospital, but she was coming in daily to see Carlisle for help. Tomorrow was a big appointment for her; after days of Carlisle gaining her trust, she was allowing him to help her medically. There was no way he would let her down.

His face fell. "Oh yes, of course. I'm sorry, Rose. I can't go."

I was the picture of disappointment. "No, that's fine. Thank you for offering. Couldn't you just go with Edward?"

Jasper shrugged. "I could, but honestly I'd prefer you came, Rose. This could explode if it's not taken proper care of."

"No, it's fine," I said with a sigh. "Find Edward and ask him. I suppose it works out for the best; Edward and I are the ones with the least to do anyway."

Alice returned to the room. "Emmett will offer to come too, so it's not all bad."

I smiled. "That's a plus."

Bella and Edward were almost there; casually coming around to see everyone. I felt Edward as he drew nearer; his proximity heightening my senses and anticipation. For some reason Alice gave me a strange look, but then shook herself as though dismissing whatever she had been thinking.

"Hey guys," Bella called as they entered. We all offered similar greetings and they joined us in the kitchen; a strangely central room for '_goings on'_. "Whoa, check out the faces. What's happening?"

It was Edward who answered, his eyes glazed the way they did when he read minds. "Jasper's friend Isaac has had a relapse. A big one. He's killed people."

Predictably, Bella gasped. "Oh my God, why?"

Something nasty and vicious in me snarled that Bella was a disgrace to our kind; _why has he killed? _ What a stupid question. I shoved it down, knowing it was born of frustration and jealousy. She stood so close to him that the sides of their arms were touching. My fingertips itched to shove her away, far away from him.

Edward moved ever so slightly away, making it seem like he was crossing his arms.

"He says it was an accident," Jasper explained doubtfully. "The guy has only been one of us for two years and I've never seen anyone struggle so badly with the blood lust before."

"Except for you, honey," Alice pointed out unexpectedly. There was no malice or double meaning there; just statement of fact.

Jasper seemed to ignore it. "If the Volturi get wind of it, they'll kill him."

Carlisle sighed. "At this point, maybe we should consider whether or not that's a bad thing."

"He's my friend," Jasper replied staunchly. "What happened to him was neither his fault or his choice."

"Nor was it for any of us," I said, playing my part. Bella coughed. "Except for Bella, of course."

"Which means what? That he should die because he's isolated and alone? He just needs some help. People to show him that they care. You should know that, Rosalie. How many did you kill when you were newborn?"

I stiffened, so very obviously offended. "That was in the service of revenge," I said coldly.

"And Edward?" Jasper said whirling to face him. "You killed so many in those first years of your life. You even left Carlisle for a while to do so!"

"I killed criminals and wrong doers, Jasper," Edward replied. "Your friend shows a lack of control, no sign of willpower. There is little that can be taught to one of our kind without willpower."

I _felt_ him smile inside.

"So I take it I'm alone in this?" Jasper said irritably.

"Of course not," Edward countered smoothly. "We're just pointing out that in future I would keep a closer eye on this man, if you intend to clean his messes."

"And you, Rose?" Jasper asked.

With a dramatic sigh, I nodded. "Yes, if you believe it necessary. How long will we be away, Alice?"

She shrugged. "It's very unclear. A couple of days maybe, if you fly. There's something strange though; I can't seem to see anything beyond you guys leaving here. Very odd. I've been so off my game the last few years."

I studiously ignored the guilt. "Well, maybe it's living so closely with Jacob."

"Maybe," she said lightly. "Anyway, I'll let you know if I see anything else. I have to go to the theatre. Call me when you get there?" she said to Jasper. He agreed and they kissed goodbye; short and sweet as was their way.

"Have good trip," she said to Edward and me. "Try not to let it get you down too much," she added, in a quieter voice to me. "I'm only on the other end of the phone if you need to talk."

I was touched by the somewhat unexpectedly sweet gesture from Alice. It had been a while since we had been very close. She smiled brightly all of a sudden.

"Oh, we're going shopping when you return! How lovely." I clasped her hand briefly before letting go, finding myself genuinely looking forward to spending more time with her, once I was in my right mind of course.

"You know," Bella said to Edward, quietly. "Nessie is away. I could come with you guys. Help out."

A thread of panic tightened around my heart; an unforeseen complication. It had never once occurred to me that Bella would offer to come along as well. She usually hid herself well away from anything violent like that. I sensed Edward's panic as well, but he hid it flawlessly.

"Darling," he murmured, running a hand through her hair. "Do you really want to be a part of this? Something so macabre and awful?"

She bit her lip. "Well, no. But I want to help any way that I can."

'_How could you possibly help?'_ I found myself thinking, with breathtaking nastiness. Edward ignored it for the most part, but I felt only very vague disapproval.

"That's so sweet," he told her, in that gentle, whispery voice he always used when speaking to her. "But honestly, it's going to be horrible. You don't know what a clean up entails and I hope you never have to."

I turned away with feverishly bright levels of jealousy as she leaned up to press her lips to his. Jasper was very carefully not looking at anyone, instead he was doing various things with his phone that seemed to require all of his attention. Booking flights and other things.

"I'm going to find Emmett," I announced a little too loud, but before anyone could comment, I swept past them.

_'Don't be jealous, Rose. You know how it must be. Think of how soon it will be that we are touching. Please just be a little more patient,'_ he intoned. It was little more than lukewarm water to a burn; a burn that required ice. I needed him and desired him more than I could ever recall in all of the soon to be one hundred years of having known him. The more distance I gained from him, the worse I felt.

Emmett was not in the house, he had to be at Black's workshop. I needed to see him as soon as possible to give the plan time to work, so I headed over there in my car. The entire time I was driving, I imagined everything I was going to do with Edward when the time finally, _finally_ came.

The scenery was a blur as I drove faster than should ever be allowed, I ran a hand around the side of my neck, chasing phantom touches and kisses that were not there yet. So incredibly long since his skin had become _my_ skin. Since he had breathed my name, kissed me so hard it felt like we were fusing together. So long since we had been one and the same; inside, connected and utterly _together_.

As I pulled over in a careless fashion, I saw Emmett holding up a car with one hand while removing a tyre with the other. "Hey baby," he called, but then upon seeing me looked concerned. "What is it?"

I got out and adopted the grim look. "Jasper's friend Isaac has killed a lot of people near Rochester. He needs our help with a clean up."

"What?" he exclaimed dropping the car. "Why?"

"Because he's Jasper's friend and he didn't mean it. We have to contain it before the Volturi find out."

"Who's we?"

"Jasper, Edward and myself."

He nodded. "Because it's Rochester."

I was surprised he clicked so soon. "Yes, exactly."

"I'll come too," he said straight away. "Help in any way I can."

I smiled at him; the slow kind of smile I knew he liked and usually it was a lot easier to slip on. "That would be great baby, thanks so much."

"When do we leave?"

"We can fly out tonight. There's preparations to be made in the meantime."

He seemed so accepting of all my lies, it almost felt too easy. Far too easy to ignore the guilt, at least.

"OK, well let me know when."

He kissed me then and the whole time, all I could feel was Edward.

* * *

**-Edward-**

We had decided a few days ago that it was better to leave the same night rather than the next day. Mainly because if Rosalie and I had to wait another hour than was necessary to be with one another, we were probably going to go crazy. She was driving me insane with how much she wanted me. I could feel her desire pulsating off of her in waves, increasingly strong and frequent. That was to say nothing of my own desires which were at breaking point themselves. It was like some kind of pressure building between us and soon it would implode.

The story was well set up, at least. We owed Jasper's friend a big favour, that was for sure. The plan was that once we were in Lockport we were actually going to stay there for the duration. Eight months ago, I had purchased a derelict building there and that was where Rosalie and I were going to stay. The perfect place to explain away noise and also if damage was done (damage _would_ be done) no one would ask questions. There was even a working land line so that if anyone needed to call, they could. Jasper would stay at a nearby hotel while he went out in search of edible evil doers to slake his thirst.

It was perfect. _Flawless_.

All that needed to be done now was stage the argument that would result in Emmett storming off and refusing to come with us. Rosalie's hesitance about performing this last piece of our play was minimal in comparison to her never ending need to be alone with me. There was even a small amount of anticipation towards the oncoming argument as it meant we were one step closer.

My God, we had to do this more frequently. It was never _enough_.

I partially watched through her eyes while trying not to let my own eyes glaze over whilst speaking to Esme about travel arrangements.

Rosalie made the offhand comment that she was shocked that Emmett would even volunteer to come. Emmett stiffened and went quiet.

"What?" she asked, distractedly. "What did I say?"

"You're well aware of what you just said," he told her quietly. "Why are you shocked?"

A perfectly practised shrug. "I just know it's difficult for you, baby," she said. "Going there."

"But it's not difficult for you?"

"Not like it is for you."

"Why?"

She laughed. "What do you mean why? Why is it difficult for you but not me? What a stupid question."

"Oh, so now I'm stupid."

"It's a stupid question, you yourself are not stupid."

"Well thanks for clearing that up for me!"

"Oh my God, what is your problem? Oh I get it. You're starting a fight with me so you don't have to come? Very mature, Emmett."

Through her eyes, I vaguely saw the sheer look of disbelief on his face. "You know, I've put up with more of your crap than usual lately and despite how much I keep thinking things will get better, they just don't."

She fiercely repressed any emotions that statement invoked. She instead opted for a rather spectacular sneer. "Quite the little victim, Em. Bravo."

"Have fun in Rochester," he said and left the room, slamming the door hard as he did.

* * *

Almost everything was in place when Bella came into our room where I was packing clothes into a suitcase, imagining how much I would _ruin_ whatever clothes Rosalie had on when we were finally alone. Bella's presence seemed somehow sudden; a mark of how distant I had been whilst fantasising.

"Hey," she said softly, slipping her arms around my waist from behind. I froze, unprepared to be thinking about Rosalie and have Bella so suddenly all around me.

"Hey," I replied, my throat oddly stuck as I forced down the urge to peel her arms off of me. She was my _wife_, my _love__, _Mother of my _child_ if nothing else and she had every right to touch me whenever she wanted. "Are you OK?"

"Yeah," she said, leaning her body against mine. I closed my eyes, willing myself not to move. "I'm just going to miss you."

"Uh-huh, me too," I said, with perhaps insufficient enthusiasm. "I'll miss you...so much."

She gave no indication of noticing anything amiss with my tone, so I continued to casually fold clothes and place them in the case.

"That's a lot of clothes," she pointed out, peering around my arm. "For a couple of days."

I sighed irritably. "Do you have any idea how messy a job it is we go to do? Clothes get covered in blood, gore and dirt. We needs lots of them."

She pulled back, having caught the tone that time. What was _wrong_ with me? I loved her, I _loved_ her, _I loved her!_

"Are you all right?" she asked. There was a palpable relief that she had stopped touching me. It was an unprecedented reaction to her touch and it shook me. "You seem sort of off."

I nodded, continuing to pack. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. I'm really not looking forward to this trip, is all."

She moved around to the other side of the suitcase so she was facing me. "I'm sorry about that," she said in what was usually such a sweet, reassuring way. It grated on me a little, then. Perhaps it was just residual traces of Rosalie in my psyche. "But it's not for long."

_Not long enough_. I shook myself to dislodge the thought and gave her the warmest, most loving smile I could muster.

"I'll be back before you know it, I promise."

She leaned in to kiss me and I actually almost flinched back. _Almost_. I hadn't completely lost my mind, so I kissed her and ignored the many shades of _wrong wrong wrong_ it felt. It had just been too long without Rosalie, too much time away and now my mind and body were impatient.

I realised after a few seconds that this wasn't just kissing. Her small, delicate hands were twining around my back and up into my hair, feather light. She had moved her body closer to mine, her movements and therefore intentions were unmistakable.

I couldn't do it. There was no way I could do it. Each and every thing she did was _wrong_. The feathery touch, the gentle kissing, slow and leisurely. Her lips were too soft, too yielding. Her scent was wrong, her height was wrong, her body was wrong and worst of all _she_ was _not_ _**her**_.

But what on earth could I say? No, we can't have sex before I go away for a few days. Why? Because I can't stand your touch while I crave another's? I'm tired? Headache? Not in the mood?

I thought back to the time when Bella had been pregnant and Rosalie had done such terrible things for me, let everyone think she was a bad person; selfish and cruel. She had retreated within herself, allowing a brilliant kind of autopilot take over while she did what had to be done. For the very first time in my life, I had sex with my wife against my will and I did it whilst far away in attic of my mind, imagining another. The only other. Her. It would be worth it. It would all be worth it.

* * *

**-Jasper-**

Some things really didn't change. Time moved, the Earth evolved and fashions came and went. Rosalie and Edward, that would never change. It didn't matter where we moved, what was happening at the time, there was an imperative between them that took precedence over all else. Time could not change it, nor any obligation to those they loved. They could be patient, but that was as far as their allowances went. I still recalled the first time I confronted Edward about their relationship. He was so uncertain of my allegiance then, unsure if I could be counted upon. One thing he had been certain of though, was that nothing was going to stop the relationship between Rosalie and himself.

"_There can never be a last time," _he had told me._ "Not between us."_

It was something I had long ago accepted. I would never be able to live without some small indulgence of human blood and they would never be able to exist without indulging in their obsession with one another. Some thing did _not_ change.

But some things did.

I had observed over the last few years that Rosalie and Edward's ability to maintain their flawless facade was fading somewhat. It was barely noticeable to anyone but myself and I only saw it because I knew what to look for. Still, something had changed. I suspected it was their level of tolerance for people who were not _them_. My certainty of this theory was cemented by having accidentally walked past Edward's room and sensing a whole boatload of emotions that I really didn't want to feel. Bella's bliss and pleasure, blah blah blah but Edward's feelings were anything but bliss. He had practically been _crying_ on the inside while having sex with Bella.

This trip couldn't have come soon enough. What with Rosalie creating tension between her and Emmett and Edward dying inside while having sex with his wife, it was a good deal more crazy than I was used to, even from them.

I decided it was best to leave them utterly alone for the two days, while I saw to my own needs. The last thing I wanted to feel was more second hand sex, however consensual and wonderful for them it might have been.

Everything packed and ready, I went to find Rosalie. I said my goodbyes to Carlisle and Esme on the way who informed me Rosalie was waiting outside, due to the argument with Emmett or so they thought.

I knew better.

"Rose," I said as I closed the door behind me. She was standing against the car, looking up at the night sky. "Are you all right?"

There was a long pause before she answered, not looking away from the stars. "No."

I could no longer feel the awfulness of Edward and Bella's marital relations, but I was sure Rosalie could feel it in a whole other way. God, was she _seeing_ it through his eyes?

I put my bags in the trunk and stood beside her in silence. There was nothing really to say, certainly nothing that would help in any way.

After a while, she let out a deep breath as though she had been holding it. "He'll be here in a minute."

Ah. So she _had_ been seeing the entire hellish scene. Lovely.

"Great," I said awkwardly. "Where did Emmett storm off to?"

She shrugged as if she didn't really care. "No idea." When she didn't elaborate, I decided to leave it alone. This was as uncomfortable as any situation I had ever been forced to bear witness to. I wanted to say things that would reassure her but there was nothing. It was what it was, what it always would be. They both the risks and the downsides. This was one of many.

Sure enough after three minutes, Edward came out of the front door. Suitcase in one hand and an expression of barely concealed agony so obvious that I had to hope no one else had seen him leave. Rosalie was driving to the airport, so we all piled in and began the journey.

"Sorry I was late," Edward said, sounding somewhat hollow. He sat in the front, while I was in the back. "I got held up." I wondered why he even bothered to lie.

"No problem," I said trying to sound as normal as I could and stared out of the window, giving them what little privacy my silence could allow them. Rosalie took Edward's hand and clasped it tightly in her own.

Distantly, I sensed that she was somehow calming him down. Perhaps saying something to him using their telepathy. After a few more minutes of driving, he moved to lay his head on her shoulder and she pulled him in close, wrapping a single arm around him.

Some things would never change, but I could not shake the feeling that something soon would. Something had to.

* * *

**-Rosalie-**

By the time we were saying goodbye to Jasper and wishing him well over the next few days, I felt as though I was going to vibrate out of my skin with the tension. The anticipation and need had gone far beyond simple desire and lust. It was the agony of feeling Edward with Bella, how much he hadn't wanted it. I had to wash it off of him, replace it with _myself_.

"And for God's sake," Jasper said gravely. "Keep your phone on!"

"We will," I promised, rather impatiently. "Have fun."

He left us in the place that Edward owned, a place I thoroughly intended to destroy. It was a three storey building, empty save for bricks and wood. Derelict and abandoned.

I put the suitcase down and looked to Edward. It was incredible just to be able to _look_ at him properly, without having to filter the intensity. I said his name and all the energy he had been putting into holding himself together, gave out completely.

"It's been too long," he sobbed a little, his face so wretched that I wanted to cry. "I can't live without you this long."

I moved fluidly towards him, placing a hand on his face. He closed his eyes. "I know."

"Tell me you're mine," he whispered, eyes still closed. "Please say it."

"I am yours, Edward, always and you are mine."

When he opened his eyes, there was raw desperation and need that accurately mirrored my own. I felt the moment build, rise to a crescendo of unbearable heights. After so long waiting, here it was.

For the first time in nineteen months, our mouths met. It wasn't a sweet, soft kiss. It the kind of kiss we lived for. He practically smashed his mouth into mine, pulling me bodily towards him and I was all too eager to meet him. I knew this first time would be fast and rough; little attention to detail paid. It was what I wanted; to get the taste of Bella out of his mouth. Delicate, sweet little Bella who was still so human despite the transition.

He drew back forcefully and I felt exactly what he required.

"Don't hold back," I told him, voice low and unstable with the sheer force of my desire. "You can't break me."

That was it, just what he needed to hear. He grabbed my back and I jumped up on him, wrapping my legs around him tightly. He held me in place and we kissed with an intensity that bordered on violence. My hands moved everywhere they had not been allowed to for so long; tearing through his hair, pulling just enough to make him wild. Over his chest, his stomach and then moving ever downwards. He dropped to his knees and pressed me harder into him. I tightened the grip around him with my legs and he groaned, head tilting back. The sound from his throat sent a bolt of heat through me and what little sanity I had left abandoned me completely.

"Come on," I muttered as I recaptured his mouth to sink my teeth into his lower lip. He stared at me, eyes heavy lidded with lust and something more primal. "I want more, everything. I want _you._"

My back hit the floor hard and I relished it. We had both endured so long with partners who kissed gently and with too much consideration. I wanted to feel _alive_ as I only did with Edward. Needed to feel that immortal venom pulsing within me, burning through skin and bone and replacing it with pure fire. Edward was my connection to the part of me that was inhuman. I denied it blood, but allowed it this. There was no trace of our monstrosity anywhere but there.

I tore his shirt completely off of him, reveling in the feel of the material ripping apart. He bent down and placed his open mouth over a long lost pulse point in my neck, biting down and sucking hard.

"Ahhh!" I moaned, unable to help myself. "Harder!"

He obliged, digging his teeth in just shy of breaking the skin and sucked the cold flesh as hard as he could until I felt something almost like pain. It was incredible; so little ever actually registered as _feeling_. Sensation was hard to come by when you were practically made of stone. I was working his belt with one hand and clawing my fingernails down his back with the other. He growled into my neck and tore backwards, eyes feral and delirious.

We tore at each others remaining items of clothing until there was _nothing_ but skin on skin. My skin, his skin...it all became _our_ skin. The lonely ache of being without the other half of me was gone. Here was truth, here was completion and here we finally were together.

It was beyond bliss, beyond pain. I wanted more, more, _more_ and he knew it. I curled my legs around his back as he positioned himself ready to slip inside me. I wanted to prolong the moment but there was no way, _no way_ we could wait any longer. His eyes locked with mine and the recognition in them was startling. We were looking at one another as though we had not done so in years. There he was, the entirety of my world. I reached up and traced his lips with my fingers, feeling the love, bliss...whatever it was...swelling within me as though one hundred years had no passed between us and this was our first time all over again.

He latched onto the thought, his perfect mouth curling into a bittersweet smile.

"One hundred years," he sighed. "Happy anniversary, Rosalie."

He cried out as he entered me and I couldn't help but do the same though I could barely hear myself. Fullness, completion...pleasure beyond articulation. He said my name over and over, prayer like. My hands ran all over his back, unable to keep still as he moved inside me.

"More," I gasped. "_Please_."

He knew what instantly I meant. He touched his forehead to mine and his tendrils of warm light extended into my own consciousness. I wanted him inside me in every possible way, wanted it forever.

"God, yes, yes, _yes_," I was babbling. "Stay inside me forever."

His pace was increasing, trading rhythm for speed and I felt my own orgasm building in the pit of my stomach; heat and light and a soft sort of agony. I pulled him down to kiss me, holding him there with both hands.

He felt it, _we_ felt it together connected as we were and it triggered his own orgasm to arrive with mine. He cried out into my own mouth and I swallowed down each and every noise he made, too far outside my own body to even know or care what sounds I was creating.

The world had righted itself for the first time in a long time. All was well, once more. After a few more minutes, an intense calm and happiness settled into my bones, reassuring me that the world could be a good place. That life, immortal or not, could be worth living.

Edward kissed me again, some of the urgency having fled but there remained a sense of need. "My Rose," he breathed, shaky and raw. "My beautiful Rose."

I smiled and kissed him languidly. "Why do we always wait this long?"

He rolled off of me and laughed. "Because we share a weakness for tragedy." He paused for a moment, smile fading slightly. "And because we have other...obligations."

"Don't you dare speak of them now," I warned. "We have so little time as it is."

Edward propped himself up on one elbow and looked at me. "Of course, I'm sorry." He seemed so relaxed, so entirely at one with his own self. My Edward, the beautiful young boy he had once been before encountering death and immortality. The boy he could have been a little while longer had he not met Carlisle. By the time I encountered him he was already a man, so much age and experience in his eyes but every now and then I could see the vestiges of what had once been innocence. With no outside pressures or responsibilities to weigh him down, he could look just as he did then.

"And you also," he said, stroking my hair behind my ear. "Who in the world is lucky enough to see Rosalie Hale as I do?"

"Only you," I replied. "Only ever you."

* * *

Two days passed all too soon. Treacherous as time was, it flew by when I wanted it to come to a crashing halt. The entirety of that day was spent in blissful company with not a single piece of clothing. It was easy to lose count of how many times we had sex, how much we kissed and how many words passed between us. Some hours were spent just talking, our bodies pressed together making walls from our backs to exclude the rest of the world.

It was so amazing to make him smile, elicit a laugh from him and see his eyes light up. Edward so rarely laughed about anything and genuine smiles (not the kind he wore for _others_) were almost as scarce.

"Do you feel we are more equal now?" he asked me, his knees pressed against mine as we lay on the very messy, debris strewn floor.

"Equal how?" I asked as my fingers traces patterns and words into his skin.

"You always seemed to be the strong one. The one who had to make sacrifices for me. Do you feel the same now, or so you feel some sense of equilibrium?"

"_You_ feel an equilibrium?"

He said, "Yes I do. I feel we are finally old enough that we have gained some form of wisdom. I, at least, feel that I am a better version of myself."

I considered. "I can see that. But then surely it's to be expected, after having known each other for a full century now?"

"It still doesn't feel real," he replied. "One hundred years. It feels both too short and too long. So much has happened and yet not enough."

I closed my eyes briefly. "Imagine if we had been even a tenth as wise then as we are now. So much could have been avoided."

"We have Nessie," he offered.

"_You_ have Nessie," I countered gently.

He shuffled closed and said, "Nessie is yours and mine, Rosalie. You saw to it that she was brought into this world. _You_ gave her to me. She is ours, as much as she is...anyone else's. Anything good in this life comes from you."

I did not correct him. "And vice versa, my darling."

The time was growing near for us to commence the process of returning to reality and we both knew it. I wanted to ignore it and pretend it wasn't really happening. It wasn't enough time, nowhere near enough time. It felt as though we were only just at the start of our time together.

There had to be a last time. The knowledge made me want to cry.

We had everything ready to leave and meet Jasper in an hour. My hands were shaking badly as I fumbled with the few remaining objects we needed. Edward took my hands in his and held them, leaning his face to mine.

"We won't leave it this long again," he promised me fervently. "I swear it, we can work something out, somehow."

It wasn't enough. It would simply never be enough, no matter how much we tried. It was getting harder and harder as time wore on to say goodbye and return to obligations and lies.

He read the thought and it evoked his own, very similar pain in answer. "I know, Rosalie. I know. We can be strong, we can do this. We have always done it."

"Another hundred years of this?" I asked tightly. "It's too much."

"We can endure," he whispered, running a hand through my hair. "You and I can withstand anything."

I nodded blindly, wanting to reassure him but I was breaking apart. He kissed me and took my purse from my fingers, throwing it on the floor. I let him pull me closer, returning his kiss with bittersweet desperation.

"We have time," I gasped, circling my arms around his neck. "Time enough for a last time."

This time details did matter. Every patch of his skin that I kissed or touched, I tried to memorise and store away. Each sound he made, each movement, each individual kiss. It was precious to us both, this last time together before a vast period of abstinence and denial. One big breath before being submerged under water.

We removed only what clothing was necessary, so as to give us more time together. I sat on his lap as he knelt on the floor and only once he was inside me did I start to cry. He was crying too, but not as a human would. It was rare that our bodies would produce tears and this was not one of those times. Instead we cried as we groaned and gasped, pleasure and torment, happiness and creeping sadness intertwined as we took what comfort we could while time permitted it.

I kept my forehead to his the entire time, losing myself in his mind and he in mine. I wanted to lose myself in _him, _caring nothing for consequences or vile obligations. There were noises, but I was unsure if I was making them or he was. It was hard to tell, for how deep I was inside his mind.

_'Stay inside me,_' I begged him. _'Never leave me, so empty when you're not inside me.'_

_'Nothing outside of you,'_ he sang in my mind. _'You are everything.'_

I didn't want it to end, but I could feel it coming. I buried myself into his mouth, wanting to fuse us together permanently. The pleasure was building and building, hot and sweet and ready to burst throughout our bodies and echo through our singular mind. There was no delaying it, no stopping it.

There were so many noises, Edward's cries the sweetest among them. Mine were loud too as I fell over the edge with him, tumbling through layers of bliss and rapture. We shared in some strange kind of mutual orgasm, brought about through our connection. It resonated deeply within us both, stealing my ability to breath, hear or even think.

As the shock waves dissipated slowly from us and the world began to focus once more, I could only marvel at the beautiful creature before me. If love was the word for it, then I would have screamed it until my throat gave out, but it wasn't. Perhaps a word that had not been coined yet. We had the time to wait and see if it ever would be.

He stroked my face with a trembling hand.

"Not time," he breathed. "Love or..."

He paused, seeming caught off guard and somewhat confused. His mind had detected something all of a sudden as our senses were returning to us slowly. I looked over to where my bag was on the floor. My phone was vibrating insistently. We hadn't heard it, of course.

But that was not what his mind had sensed.

It was then, while he was still inside me and I on his lap, that I caught sight of movement over Edward's shoulder, near the door.

The world shattered and broke.

Emmett was standing there in the doorway.

* * *

_Author's Notes: So, let's all get ready for the next part, which will be added soon. I won't stay too much here, because it's late and I'm off to start the next piece. I hope this was worth the wait, or at least entertaining. Review because I love you all and would DIE to hear from you guys. Apologies for mistakes and y'know, if this has defiled your BP Canon. _

_Bex_

_x x x _


	2. Chapter 2: Everything Breaks, Eventually

_**I feel I must reiterate a few things for some people who seem to think that I'm using Breaking Points as a how-to textbook for real life relationships. This is a story about very broken, fairly monstrous people who do terrible things to those they love and can never escape the consequences because they're immortal. I adore Rosalie and Edward, I do...but I wholly acknowledge that they're not decent, normal people. By no stretch of anyone's imagination do I think this behavior is admirable or good or anything that should ever be attempted or emulated. These people are monsters; both literally and figuratively. **_

_**It's incredible that I have to even put this, but seriously...the people who have prompted this disclaimer never leave actual reviews. Just to be clear, this is not aimed at ANYONE who left a review of any kind, it's for the people who have sent me incredibly angry, vile private messages and one particularly memorable death threat. So I am hoping this puts any problems to rest, but ultimately I doubt it. It feels like there's a determination with this hatred to do with the fact that I've committed a great atrocity in the world of pairings. I enjoy writing angst, misery and tragedy. I'm not a Happy Little Elves kind of girl, so at the risk of sounding rude – if you don't like it, then don't read it. I wouldn't know from experience, but there has to be a mass of Schmoopy OTP Bella/Edward fic out there, right?**_

_**Enormous thanks and love to those wonderful people who offered me support against a rather unexpected wave of hatred and criticism, but more about that at the end of this chapter. **_

_**All that being said, I am to break hearts and I'm a crack shot, so enjoy if you dare!**_

* * *

**-Chapter Two: Everything Breaks, Eventually-**

_'Spotlight, bad baby, you've got a flair,  
For the violentest kind of love anywhere out there.  
Mon amour, sweet child of mine,  
You're divine.  
Didn't anyone ever tell you  
It's OK to shine?  
Roses, Bel Air, take me there,  
I've been waiting to meet you.  
Palm trees in the light,  
I can sleep late at night.  
Darling, I'm waiting to greet you,  
Come to me, baby.'_

_-Lana Del Rey_

**-Rosalie-**

_1934_

_He was angry, that much was obvious. It was written all over his beautiful face, tightly drawn lines of resentment and barely veiled frustration. Even angry, he was mesmerising. Though I had little sympathy for the societal constraints of being a man, this was one of the few occasions I felt he would benefit from being granted some freedom of expression. His emotions were always so controlled and in check. It must have been difficult, but then as I said, I had bore witness to one such occasion of a different man freeing himself of his gentlemanly obligations. Not to mention his general obligations to the human race; and I had not been impressed over all with _that_ experience. _

_I looked down slightly, hating myself for how flippantly I was able to recall it at times. It caught me off guard, this incredibly sarcastic, acidic nature shaping walls and defenses from the inside, out. I had never been _pleasant_ like Esme but I had never been like this, either. I hoped I would grow out of it. _

_He was still angry, but now he was reading my thoughts and he was distracted. He hated when I thought of it; enduring my recollection of it like he was reliving it. _

"_Please don't," he said, softer than before. "You know I can't bear to think of it."_

_Nastily, I wanted to say that it was I who'd suffered through it, let alone having to think of it. But that would be needlessly cruel and go a long way towards cementing this new, formulating persona. Edward, hearing the thought, didn't comment any how. It must have counted for something that I didn't say it. _

"_I'm sorry," I said tucking my hair behind my ear; something to do with my treacherous hands, that could never be still or obedient. "And I am sorry also for...the other thing."_

_He sighed and some of the anger returning, but dampened by something I recognised as pity. I _despised_ when he pitied me. I could taste it in the back of my throat, something saccharinely poisonous. It made me want to lash out, make things painful in the present instead of the past. _

"_You know where my hesitation lays, Rosalie," he continued, obviously ignoring my other thoughts. "As well as I know why you're doing all you can to ignore it."_

"_What a surprise," I laughed bitterly, a dazzling smile appearing nonetheless. "Edward Cullen _does_ know everything!"_

"_Don't be facetious," he warned. "It doesn't suit you."_

"_Maybe you should write a book of instructions for me, then I could remember all the little Do's and Don'ts when it comes to being Rosalie Hale."_

"_For God's sake, it is such a bad thing that I don't want to do it yet? I would have thought you might be relieved!"_

_He had spit his response thoughtlessly and I saw the regret the minute he'd finished saying it. Regret that he had been honest. Was I already so bad he was afraid of telling me a truth I didn't want to hear? I would definitely work to avoid becoming this person, I really would. _

_With effort, I replied calmly, "I can see why you'd think that, but it's not true. We keep building up to it and then stopping short of actually doing it. I want to do it, I do; but I think maybe you don't."_

_I was carefully referring to the issue as 'It' because when I'd actually said 'sex' he had gotten angry. Such a gentleman,. Edward was; too much of one really. He was embarrassed, uncomfortable talking to me about it so directly. Societal constraints still applying to the undead, it was almost funny. _

"_That's not..." he paused, shaking his head. "I do want to, but it feels rushed."_

_I laughed, unable to stop myself. "Why? Because we're not married?" He didn't answer; instead he stared at me defiantly. "Oh, Edward! You really cling to such ideals? We are not even human!"_

"_Some ideals are worth clinging to," he said defended quietly. "Not all, but some."_

"_You crave a lavish wedding...to _me_?" The idea seemed almost ludicrous. _

_Still staring at me he replied, "Yes."_

_It was impossible to laugh when he was being so solemn. "You cannot be serious, Edward. This is what it is."_

_He shifted, clearly uncomfortable again. "Just...just sex?"_

_I knelt before him, placing my hands on either side of his face. "What we have will never be _'just sex'._ If we ever actually have sex, that is," I added, trying for levity. He didn't quite smile, but his eyes lightened. "I know we've only been together a few months but I can already tell you that it is more than anything I've ever felt. It's just that I don't want to get married, really. I wore a wedding dress once and that was enough. I can't be tied to someone by law and a gold band, Edward. I am bound to you of my own free will, without constraint or obliga-."_

_He crushed his lips to mine, hand curling around the back of my neck and pulling me deeper into the kiss. When we parted, I was almost breathless with desire for him. My Edward, mine. God I wanted him to be mine, always mine. Part of me knew he would become mine by whatever means necessary. I would possess him entirely until no matter what, he would be mine before he belonged to himself. If it was wrong to do that, I didn't care. _

_Without prompting, he whispered, "Always yours." His nose rubbed against mine, hands tangled in my hair. "Yours in every way you will have me. Always."_

_I smiled and said, "I'll hold you to that, Edward Cullen."_

* * *

**-Emmett-**

_Now_

It hadn't been intentional to arrive on the day they were due to leave. In fact, it was like the universe had been against me even getting there at all, let alone on time. I'd fully intended to arrive the day after they had, to surprise Rosalie and make it up to her for the argument we'd had before she left. Strangely, everything that could have gone wrong, did go wrong. From losing my ID's (all three of them) to the rental companies having a shortage of cars. There was even a strange moment when Esme half begged me not to go, insisting that she had things she needed my help with but then couldn't name any of them when I asked.

I'd considered giving up at one point, Rosalie would have been back sooner than I could get there at that rate, but I knew how happy it would have made her to see me and I had a horrible feeling from the unresolved argument. I drove for a full day and half to see her, not stopping once along the way for anything but gas. I didn't call ahead because I wanted it to be a surprise.

The first thing I realised once I arrived in New York was that I had no idea where the place was. I knew the general location, but didn't have the address. I still didn't want to call Rosalie lest it ruin the surprise, so I called Jasper instead.

That should have been my first warning, right there. His _silence_, when I asked where they were. Then the odd questions.

"_You're here?" _he'd asked, sounding utterly shocked. So unlike the Jasper I knew. "_Why didn't you call ahead? Why didn't you let us know?"_

"_It's a surprise,_" I'd told him, mildly offended. _"So don't say anything to Rose."_

"_Where are you now?_" he'd asked, or more accurately demanded. It got my back up a little, but not anywhere near what it should have in retrospect.

"_Lincoln Avenue, are you guys nearby?"_

More silence, to the point that I wondered if the connection had been lost, but then he spoke.

"_You're about five minutes away. We'll come to you."_

"_No,"_ I insisted. _"Do you know the meaning of the word surprise, Jasper?"_

"_All right, we're uh...just about finished anyway."_

He gave me the address and then got off the phone without saying goodbye. I made my way to the place, a very abandoned looking building in the middle of a quiet and obviously not frequented street. It seemed strange that they would still be there in the place, if indeed this was the scene of the many crimes. Perhaps this was where they had disposed of the bodies, but that didn't make sense either and besides, there was no scent of blood.

Still, I could detect the faint smell of my wife within the building so I proceeded inwards. The door didn't lock, but it was wedged very tightly shut. I made short work of it, all the while staying deadly silent in the hopes of maintaining the surprise. There were sounds upstairs, talking and moving so I knew they were still there and I was not too late.

That was when I sensed something was wrong. Were they arguing again? They hadn't done that in a long time and I would be disappointed if they had started that up again. I stood very still and listened carefully to the sounds coming from two floors above.

"_We can endure," _Edward was saying. _"You and I can withstand anything."_

I frowned, unsure of what context that had been in. Surely a reference to our family, the Cullens and our ability to go through tough times and come out the other side. I felt a little stupid suddenly, having come so far for such a pointless exercise. They were obviously going through something seriously bad and I'd come to make a stupid, happy surprise of it.

Caught in my own uncertainty of my actions, I might have left until the argument was over, were it not for the next thing I heard.

Rosalie sounded utterly _wrecked_. She'd said, "_We have time. Time enough for a last time."_

The silence that followed was all wrong. Not the silence of awkward, upset siblings but a silence that was not really silence at all. Silent only because I was not seeing what was really happening. Like knowing people were whispering, but not being close enough to determine what was being said.

There were movements, definite sounds of the both of them moving and doing something I could not define. Packing their things? Moving...furniture? No, it wasn't that.

An old suspicion struck me for the first time in a long time, like lightning through a tree trunk. The sounds, the _noises_ they were making...it wasn't from moving things. They were creating those sounds _together_. It couldn't be, of course it couldn't be that but it sounded like it. Had Rosalie left and Edward was somehow cheating on Bella with someone else? That was so unlike him that the thought seemed ridiculous to me.

Whoever it was, they were having sex. There was absolutely no mistaking the sounds now. It had to be that Edward was somehow cheating on Bella and Rosalie had been stating her objection to it. That was all that made sense, all that could make _any_ sense.

I was right on the verge of leaving there and then, to seek sanity outside the derelict walls of that place when what I heard next sent the world to a grinding halt.

"_Stay inside me,"_ Rosalie cried out. "_Never leave me, so empty when you're not inside me!"_

I just froze, utterly froze in every way possible. Mind, body, soul. The realisation that Rosalie was having sex with Edward hit me harder than any other object or creature ever had, including the bear that rent me apart so long ago. It should have been impossible to reconcile, utterly inconceivable...but it wasn't. Once I heard her speak, I knew it was the both of them. I believed it. I couldn't feel anything but my own fatal acceptance of the truth.

"_Nothing outside of you," _Edward had replied to her,_ to my wif_e and the thing I loved most in all the world. _"You are everything."_

I could do nothing but listen to what was happening above me. It began to feel as though I had slipped into a dream. I heard a cell phone vibrating above me, but they obviously didn't hear or notice it. They were too...busy.

Rosalie and Edward. Edward and Rosalie. My brother who was my best friend. My wife, the source of all my happiness and love.

I was moving before I even knew what was happening. I had turned and was making my way up the rickety stairs, feeling as though I was flying somehow without legs. The room they were in was less than seven yards from where I stood at the top of the stairs.

Worse than the sounds, now I could smell them. The undeniable evidence of what they had done and what they had been _doing_ for the entire time I had been stupidly fretting about flights and surprise visits. I felt vaguely as though I was going to be sick, but that was impossible. I moved towards the doorway, unable to prepare myself in any way for what I was about to see.

The love of my whole life was on my brother's lap, naked in places but clothed in others. Edward had only moved his jeans and boxers down enough so that he could...enough that...

They were kissing deeply, shaking and gasping in the obvious aftermath of what they had done, what I had _heard_ them do. I could just see Rosalie's face, flushed and...my God, I didn't even know what it was. I had never seen her look like that. I had never made her look like that. If there was pain, I couldn't really feel it yet. The truth made me numb to everything but nausea.

Edward whispered something to her. "_Not time, love or..." _

At long last, he seemed to sense something of my presence. His sentence went unfinished and his relaxed posture vanished, back stiffening as undeniable instinct took over. I stood my ground, unable to do anything else.

It was then that Rosalie's eyes flickered in my direction and she finally saw me. That was when the numbness vanished and real, absolute pain set in for the first time.

* * *

**-Edward-**

I saw it through the mindscape of her thoughts, but still did not quite believe it. It couldn't be believed because it was impossible. Utterly impracticable and inconceivable. There was no way and yet...I had sensed his presence only a moment before that. Rosalie had frozen completely, some strange rigor mortis having taken over her whole body and even her mind.

It was him; I knew it and yet could not accept it. No God would ever be that cruel, no deity or guardian of this world could do such a thing.

But it was him, he _was_ standing there…and he knew.

Without even having turned to see him yet, the true horror of the situation was only just making itself known to me. The position we were in was unimaginable and we had yet to move. Rosalie had turned to stone and so it fell to me to move us both. Carefully, with hands that had never trembled so much, I lifted her gently off of me and placed her on the floor. This seemed to make her somewhat more aware of the fact that she had to move, had to re-dress herself in places. She did so slowly, with numb appendages and slow blinking eyes.

I quickly pulled my boxers and jeans up, fumbling at my belt with some difficulty as my hands seemed to have turned to jello. Once it was done, there was nothing to do but turn and face him. I would have cut my own arm off to avoid it.

He stood in the doorway, unmoving as a statue and with a face unlike anything I had ever seen on him. It wasn't anger, pain or sadness, but a terrible overdose of all three. Too much for him to express. His mind...I couldn't even attempt to do anything but avoid it as one strives to avoid a tornado.

He was looking mainly at Rosalie, but when his eyes finally slid onto me I felt as though I too had been frozen. I had to speak, I had to. "Emmett..." I trailed off, expecting him to interrupt me violently, but when he didn't I realised I had nothing to say.

It took a while for him to move, let alone speak and when he did speak it was in a voice I had never heard him use.

"I don't...understand. How is this happening?"

I realised quickly that he was going to want _answers. _Every imaginable, conceivable and likely scenario had passed through my mind at some point over the years. The sheer risk of what we attempted each time always made me consider the consequences, albeit in a very far off unlikely manner. I'd thought of Emmett finally finding out. Of our family coming to know of our century-long indiscretion . . . of it all falling down around our ears. Yet even with having imagined this scene a million times in a million different ways, it didn't remotely measure up to what I had anticipated. This real situation, this _very real_ situation we now found ourselves in was so much worse. Far beyond anything I had ever been able to imagine or comprehend.

There was nothing I could say, aside from more truth and there was no way in hell that was a good idea. It had to be minimised, if indeed it could be. I swallowed down the urge to crumple forwards and simply be sick. One of us had to be strong enough to try and contain this as best we could. Rosalie couldn't do up her buttons; it was going to be me.

When he spoke again, there was a new undercurrent to it, the beginning of something ruthless and demanding. "How long?"

I closed my eyes against the barrage of his thoughts, willing any defense I had ever learned to come forth and protect me. "It's not that simple," I said, stalling for time. He knew it, because he knew _me_.

"Since when, then?" he asked, changing tack fast.

I looked to Rosalie for some small fraction of guidance, but her mind had gone utterly blank. This was it. I had always been a good liar, self taught and instinctive. Lies protected and shielded what truth could not. Who was I to argue with what was so deeply ingrained in me?

I said, "Today was the first time."

He didn't believe me. "Oh really?"

"Yes," I told him, doing everything I could to control my voice from shaking. "This trip it was - difficult and we were arguing. It just happened."

He looked around the room and I wanted to _do something _to stop him, but I could do nothing except think of the next lie I might be able to tell.

After he had looked all around the room, he brought his stare back to me; the first signs of disgust emerging from the shock. "I know you think I'm dumb, but even I'm not _that_ dumb. You've been here the whole time. Doing this. Doing _only_ this."

"No, that's not true," I lied straight faced. "I know it looks like it, but this _was_ the first time."

He laughed bitterly at that; it sent a cold shiver down my spine. "You think you're such a brilliant liar, don't you? But you're making rookie mistakes, _brother_." I waited, unable to take a breath. "I heard you, downstairs. I heard what you both said."

Jesus Christ, he'd been downstairs while we were still _talking_. I shook my head erratically, disbelievingly. "What did you hear?"

He moved a little inside the room and I flinched at the movement, half expecting him to lunge forward and rip me apart. When he didn't, part of me was disappointed. Masochistic to the end, I supposed.

"I heard Rosalie say..." he paused, looking genuinely in agony at having to say what he was about to say. "She said she was empty when you weren't _inside_ her."

No, that couldn't be. No, no, no. "No she didn't, you didn't hear that." Lie, lie more, lie _better_; it was all I knew to do in that moment.

"And then _you said_," he pressed on relentlessly, gritting his teeth. "That there was nothing outside of her. That she was everything."

Caught in the first wave of panic, I turned to Rosalie who was surprisingly looking at me with a similarly confused, if very distant, expression. She was still trying to do up her buttons, but simply couldn't. I couldn't bear to see her still so exposed in front of Emmett. I had to help her, despite the consequences.

_'Did we say that out loud?'_ I asked her and slowly, carefully reached to do up the lowest button of her open shirt. My fingers weren't of much more use than hers, but I managed to get them done up one by one. As I reached the last one, her eyes seemed to lock onto mine and through the cloudy tears and confusion, I felt her mind stir within my own.

_'We...must have, oh God...why is he here, Edward? I can't...'_

It was quite something to be doing up Rosalie's buttons and then to hear and feel Emmett's slow, wretched understanding of the existence of something _more_ between us. His pain took a turn, morphing into a new kind of feeling that had no accurate articulation or name besides sheer torment. He was frozen, thunderstruck by his unwanted understanding of the unintentionally tender moment between his wife and myself.

Perhaps it was the fact that he had never seen me act towards Rosalie in any way other than hostile that really cemented this understanding. Whatever he had thought before, betrayal and lust driven affairs...this made it different, and he knew it.

_'I'm so sorry,'_ I told her, because what else was there to say? What else would there _ever_ be to say to anyone ever again?

"Are you...? You are, aren't you? I knew it," Emmett said very quietly, voice trembling just a fraction. "I _knew_ you could do that."

I shook myself to bring my consciousness back to the hell I was standing in. "Do what?"

Face oddly blank, he said, "I knew you two could talk to each other like that, telepathically or whatever. I've had suspicions about it for years."

I was in the midst of denying that along with everything else when Rosalie finally stood up, coming out of her initial shock a little more. "It was accidental," she said in a lifeless voice. "It happened years ago. In Ithaca, when Edward had that incident in the bathtub."

"What?"

"I couldn't let him die," she said shakily, her voice was a hollow shell of its usual self. "I was trying to bring him back and we accidentally forged some kind of...connection."

He swallowed and nodded, looking ill. "And _this_ has been happening since then?"

"No," I insisted, voice cracking. "This was the first time!"

"I don't believe you," he insisted quietly. "I don't believe a _word you've said!"_

"You have to believe me!" I said, on the verge of falling to my knees and begging. And then I said something incredibly stupid. "I'm your brother!"

His hand closed around my neck before I even really saw him move towards me and then there was a loud bang. I realised as the impact happened, it was me, going through a wall. When I opened my eyes, he was holding me up by the throat. We were both covered in wall debris. His eye were blazing.

"Brother?" he echoed, voice barely controlled. "_Brother? _You think you're my brother? You _were_ my brother! Brothers look out for one another, they have each other's back! Tell me how you're my brother, Edward?"

I tried to speak, but it was impossible. His hand was closed so tightly around my throat that if I had been human, it would have collapsed like a paper cup. My feet dangled uselessly. I could have fought, but Emmett was still incredibly strong and it was pointless.

"Emmett," Rosalie said, following us through the hole in the wall. "Let him down."

"Why?" he growled. "You afraid I'll damage him?"

"Please," she begged. "Don't."

He dropped me unceremoniously and I fell like a boneless doll, landing on my knees. "Don't tell me what to do," he warned her. "Ever again."

And as if things weren't already irreversibly bad, Jasper came flying up the stairs three at a time.

"Hey guys," he called out, forcibly cheerful, from the stairs. "Sorry I'm late, I was finishing up at docks. Double checking for any mistakes. Hey...uh, Emmett."

Jasper had obviously been unsure of what was happening and then realised that his absence was probably adding to any suspicions Emmett might have had _if_ he hadn't quite known everything. It wasn't Jasper's fault and he had meant well but it was the seal on our tomb and both Rosalie and I felt it.

He looked around at the situation and felt it himself. He closed his eyes and half looked away, cursing his own stupidity.

"Jasper," Emmett said, frowning. "You're _here_."

Jasper looked to me for guidance but I could give him none. All I could now offer Jasper was protection from the inevitable fallout. I shook my head infinitesimally, just once to each side, hoping he knew what I was saying.

_'I'm so sorry,'_ he told me in his mind. I could see what he was about to say, how shocked and horrified he would be about what Rosalie and I were doing. He would be safe from the fallout, at least.

"Did you know about this?" Emmett asked, only a mere whisper. "Did you?"

Jasper looked to Rosalie and I saw her pain reflected in his eyes. _''Tell her I'm sorry I couldn't stop it.'_

Rosalie could already hear it, but before I could relay that to him, he was speaking aloud again. "Yes, I knew. I knew everything. I'm so sorry."

Emmett looked like he'd been physically struck. He turned away, putting a hand to his mouth as if trying to stop himself from being sick. "No."

"He d-didn't know!" Rosalie stuttered suddenly. "He's lying, Emmett! He had no idea, we've been lying to everyone, including him!"

"_Been_ lying?" he echoed. "So maybe not the first time, huh?"

I managed to stand up from the dusty floor. The instinct to shield her was insanely strong and it was taking everything I had to repress it. She moved towards him, only a step but it still got my back up. It was insane, but deeply instinctual.

"Please, _please_ believe that he has nothing to do with this!" she begged.

There was a long pause while Emmett seemed to be considering what she'd said, but then he just laughed with dead eyes. It was impressively chilling.

"Like I said, honey, I'm not _that_ dumb."

"But it's true," she insisted. "He would never condone something like this, let alone be involved in it!"

"And how do I know that?" Emmett yelled suddenly, making us all flinch. Emmett could shout extremely loud, he did it so rarely that it was easy to forget. "How _the fuck _do you expect me to believe a single word that comes out of your mouth ever again?"

"Rosalie," Jasper said quietly urgent. "Stop. We have to be honest now."

"We? What does that mean?" Emmett demanded, voice trembling on the last word. "What _exactly_ does that collective entail? Just how involved are you three?"

"It's nothing like that," I said, and fatally, Rosalie said the exact same thing at the _exact_ same moment, bringing our joint statement out in perfect unison.

Emmett stared at us both, jaw clenched and nostrils flaring as he breathed like he had been punched. Something had just fallen into place for him, further confirmation that this had not just been sex and as much as that would have been an unforgivable treachery unto itself, the alternative was massively worse.

He swallowed hard before saying, "I swear to God, I will leave this place and never see any of you again unless you start _telling me the __**truth**_**!**"

The silence seemed unyielding, stifling; Rosalie was mentally begging me not to implicate Jasper no matter what. Meanwhile Jasper was insisting that I tell the whole truth of the matter. Emmett seemed to sense my conflict because his gaze was drawn back to mine. Such darkness in those usually warm, friendly eyes. The eyes of my brother, my best friend who I had been systematically betraying for close to ninety seven years. It had never really seemed real until just then.

"Well?" he asked me bitterly. "What's it to be?"

"I'll tell you anything you want," I told him, helplessly. "Anything you want."

Rosalie shook her head. "No, no, no! Emmett, he's lying! Jasper has _nothing_ to do with us! Leave him and Alice alone, please!"

Something in Emmett finally seemed to snap enough that the numbness towards his wife abated. He stormed to Rosalie and grabbed her by the upper arms, yanking her close to his face. "So concerned for everyone but me, aren't you?" he demanded, voice unstable. "So _fucking _worried about Jasper and Alice and Edward but not a morsel of compassion for the idiot who's stood by your all these years? The asshole who has taken all your fucking abuse and manic depression? _NOTHING_ FOR ME?"

"No, it's not like that, it's not, it's not!" she was insisting between sobs. "Please, please, _please_!"

He was shaking her too hard, too much. I knew it wasn't hurting her, not anywhere near the way it would hurt a human and yet I couldn't stop myself from saying, "Emmett, let her go!"

More shock, this time fairly furious shock that I had the audacity to even speak his name, let alone give him an order. He let go of her immediately and turned to me, eyes low-lidded with absolute fury.

"What did you just say?"

Rosalie was openly sobbing. "Stop, please! Edward, Jasper just go! Please, Emmett - leave them out of it! It was my fault, all of it is **my fault**!"

I was shamefully reminded of another time, seemingly so long ago, when she had taken the blame for something which had been both of our faults; when she had selflessly taken the blame for my attempted suicide. It was ironic how history repeated itself, even among vampires. Or perhaps it repeated itself _for_ our benefit, a cruel punishment to accompany immortality.

Emmett closed his eyes and shook his head. "Your fault? Really?"

"Yes," she insisted, verging on hysterical. "Yes, it was! Edward didn't want to do anything, I...I tricked him into it and Jasper didn't have a clue! I said that I couldn't bear to be around so much blood and Edward w-wanted to stay with Jasper, but I asked him to come back with me." I wanted to scream at her not to lie anymore, that Emmett wasn't going to believe it, but I couldn't. "I was mad at you! I just was so mad at you and I seduced him to get back at you! It was all me, I did it and he didn't want to and it's _my_ doing!"

"You know, there wasn't _much_ you could have done to make this worse," he whispered. "But you had to outdo yourself. I just wanted the truth. I think if nothing else, I deserved the truth."

He was going to leave. Oh God, he was just going to leave and it would be the worst thing we'd ever done. Let alone betraying him, let alone all the lying and cheating and utter deception. He would have to leave a scene such as this without even being given the chance to demand answers.

I couldn't let it happen.

"1933," I blurted out. "That's when it started, between us."

He paused, midway towards the stairs but didn't turn around.

"It's been happening on and off ever since."

"No, _no_ it hasn't...Edward please..."

"Rosalie, _stop!"_ I shouted. "You have to _stop_ now. There is nothing we can do anymore. No solution, or clever lie. No deception, no nothing. It's happened and we have to be honest."

She couldn't even look at me, she just turned her face away and kept her hand over her mouth.

"You're going to be honest?" Emmett asked, quietly from the doorway.

"Yes," I said, voice trembling. "I swear it."

"Jasper," he said shortly. "Go."

"But," Jasper equivocated, looking from Emmett to Rosalie. "I don't think I should."

Emmett just nodded. "You should."

Jasper and Rosalie shared such a long look that I momentarily wondered if they were speaking to each other telepathically. They weren't of course, but that didn't mean they weren't having a little conversation of their own.

_I don't want to leave you, _he seemed to say.

_You have to go. I can't bear to see your life ruined as well. _

_I'm afraid for you. _

_Don't be. This has to happen. _

_I love you, sister. _

_And I you, brother. _

Jasper left the building quickly and only when he was truly gone did Emmett turn back to us, eyes stony and cold.

"I have to know," he told us. "I have to have answers, because I don't understand."

"We owe you that," I agreed, nodding frantically. "We owe you answers."

"Don't _patronise_ me," he warned. "And at the first sign of a lie, I walk."

Rosalie looked around, clearly trying to calm herself down. "I won't lie," she promised.

There was a horrible bout of silence as Emmett considered what he wanted to know most. "So this...this has been happening since you met?"

"Yes," I said. "Not right away, but soon after."

Emmett was staring determinedly at the floor. "How?" he asked in a would-be casual tone.

"Sorry?"

Rosalie stepped forward. "He means, how did it happen?"

"It wasn't that simple, that straightforward," I said haltingly. Emmett let out a low hiss.

"Then _make_ it simple."

"It just...started," I explained lamely. "We initially didn't get along at all. I thought she was stupid and shallow, she thought I was pretentious and arrogant. Simply put, we were...very alone and it really did _just happen_."

"Why?" he asked.

"What do you mean, _why_?" Rosalie demanded, her tone dangerously close to annoyed.

"I _mean_," Emmett snapped. "Why is this still happening? What is it between you? Is it...is it just an affair, some kind of attraction?" He said it in such a way, like he was desperate for us to say that it was and prove wrong what he already suspected.

I looked at Rosalie very quickly and away again. This was doubtlessly the point where we should've lied, but he already knew the answer and would walk away if we did. He deserved more than that.

"No, it's not just an attraction," I told him very quietly.

He nodded, still staring anywhere but at us. "Then, tell me what it is?" We both fell short of anything to say. "Do you...are you in love?" he asked when we said nothing.

Rosalie was starting to hyperventilate a little. "It's...not like that."

"THEN TELL ME WHAT IT'S LIKE!" he screamed all of a sudden. "JUST TELL ME _**WHAT THIS IS**_!"

"It's _like_ love," I said in a rush. "It's not just an affair or lust or anything like that. It's like love, but it's not quite...love."

Emmett fixed me with a hateful stare. "Not _quite_ love?"

"I love her, of course I do but it's...it's not _only_ love." Everything was coming out all wrong, _so _incredibly wrong! Why hadn't we just lied?

He was actually trembling with rage. "Then what is it? Tell me, _brother;_ what it is you feel for my _**wife**_?"

"She's - she's the other half of me," the words simply tumbled, pulled from me without consent. "She's everything."

Emmett actually gasped, like he was winded. "Jesus," he gasped breathlessly. "Jesus Christ. This can't be happening...it just can't. You two, you _hate_ each other! You argue about everything!"

"It was so people didn't get suspicious," Rosalie explained.

His attention fell back to her and away from me. I wished it hadn't. "And you feel the same about him? Is he the...the other half of you?"

She closed her eyes, trying vaguely to maintain a modicum of sanity. "Yes."

Her confirmation seemed to do something irreversible to Emmett. The last of anything resembling the brother I loved was shuttered away behind a dark, cold face with dead eyes. "Yes," he echoed, deadly flat. "Yes, Edward is the other half of who you are. Yes, Edward is everything to you."

Rosalie didn't answer, she didn't need to. He knew.

"And what was I, then?" he demanded in the same lifeless tone. "Where did I fit into this tragic romance saga?"

"I fell in love with you!" she told him, hysterics fading only to be replaced with something else; something that I felt wasn't in any way good. "You made me so happy, I felt normal with you."

"How could you love me and feel for him what you felt?"

"It..." she faltered, swallowing. "It's not the same. I honestly love you. But Edward...Edward is simply different. He's always been different."

A genuine sneer of disgust twisted his usually kind features. "You treacherous whore."

It took everything I had to stop myself from saying or doing something stupid. Rosalie didn't even look hurt, simply acknowledging what he had said as truth. "I know," she agreed softly. It was difficult not to react, when everything inside of me wanted to defend her and insist that wasn't true.

"Do you have any idea of how many lives you've ruined? Not even only mine. You just _can't_ be happy, can you? You have to destroy everything. You have now destroyed this family. I know that Jasper was in on this as well. Alice will know. Do you think she'll forgive him?"

At the mention of Jasper, Alice and our family, something seemed to shift inside Rosalie. I could feel the shape of it from her thoughts.

"You don't have to do that," Rosalie implored almost silently. "Please, do whatever you want to me...please just leave Jasper and Edward alone. You're absolutely right, I _am_ a treacherous whore and I deserve whatever you want to dish out, but leave them alone!"

He bared his teeth a little, snarling, "Leave _Edward_ alone? My God, you've lost your mind!"

"Why?" she shouted, suddenly stronger and louder than was advisable. This was her shift; fear always galvanised Rosalie, made her mutinous and unnaturally strong. "You're so desperate to make this all Edward's fault? Oh, poor delicate little Rosalie can't be to blame for all this on her own? Well you know what? I'm the one who went behind your back for all these years, forced you fall in love with me and still betrayed you over and _over_ again!"

"Rosalie, stop!" I croaked, helplessly. "_Stop!_" It was all so familiar.

But she had started and I could now see with a sickening horror how far she was prepared to go. Her thoughts were clear; she wanted to protect me as best as she could; if there was a chance to do so...she was going to take it, utterly disregarding the consequences for herself.

_History repeating itself_, rang hollowly in the recesses of my mind.

"Edward used to beg me to tell you, couldn't bear to betray you! But me? I _loved_ it! I loved knowing I had you there like a puppet on a string - my little puppy dog so trusting and _dumb!_"

"Shut your mouth," he warned her, fingers flexing and twitching. "_Shut up!_"

"No I won't shut up, you wanted the truth? Here it is...the undiluted truth! The only way I've managed to live through this _dull, _miserable sham of a marriage is by FUCKING YOUR BROTHER EVERY CHANCE I GOT!"

He grabbed her before I could even react, to protect her. I was certain, as she was, that he was going to hit her, maybe worse. He held her wrists tightly in his, yanking her close to his face.

"You twisted little bitch," he hissed, words shaking all over the place. "You think you can trick me into hitting you? Because that's what _he'd_ do, isn't it?" She didn't answer. "You'd push and push and he'd snap! You're so _fucked up_ that you can only cope with things by making it physical. Well bad luck, princess. I'm _not_ fucked up; I'll scream and shout and grab you, but I don't _hit_ women! I would _never _do that, no matter what revolting bullshit you come out with."

The shock of his inaction was written all over her beautiful face, and I felt like a hole had been punched through me. He let go of her and moved away, as though she was poisonous.

"You two," he gestured. "You're sick." It sounded hollow, wooden. "Whatever this relationship is, it's not natural. You've spent the last ninety years living as brother and sister, becoming something more inhuman than anything we've ever encountered. I don't even know who you are anymore."

"She was trying to protect me," I tried to explain, but it was difficult to speak. "She didn't mean any of it."

Without looking to me, he said, "I trusted you so much, you know. Of everyone, I trusted _you_ implicitly. I loved you more than you ever knew. When things were bad, I would come and ask for your _advice. _Were you just laughing at me?"

"No," I said instantly. "Never! I know it means nothing now and is probably worthless, but it was never like that! And no matter what she says, it wasn't like that for Rosalie, either!"

He waited quietly, so I went on. "You're right, we're both fucked up. We were right from the start and maybe if we hadn't been so badly messed up, Rosalie and I would've fallen in love normally. But we didn't. It got twisted and distorted beyond anything we could cope with. When Rosalie met you, we both knew we had screwed everything up. She loved you but we were still caught up in each other. The more we tried not to be, the worse it got."

"Why didn't you just break it off with me?" he demanded quietly of her. "Why let it go on?"

She couldn't respond to that, I felt it. I tried to answer in her stead. "I insisted that it did," I told him, voice cracking. "You...you made things stable. You made _us_ more stable."

He laughed bitterly. "I'm so glad I helped. And Bella?"

I winced. "Bella was...similar. You both made us balanced. Normal."

He shook his head. "You have a _child_ with her."

"We know," Rosalie said in a similarly hollow voice. "We tried to stop it for a long time after that, ten years actually. But it was too hard."

"I'll bet it was, really difficult."

There was nothing else to say on that. More silence followed as he pondered his next question.

"Who else knows?"

"Only Jasper," I reassured, knowing Rosalie was going to lie if I hadn't. "No one else."

"Why does Jasper cover for you?"

"That's not...not for us to say," I stammered.

"It's going to come out anyway," he stated blandly. "Tell me why."

Rosalie answered, "Because we - in turn - cover for him."

Emmett frowned, confused. "He's cheating on Alice?"

"No," she said quickly denied. "He'd never do that. He can't live without human blood. Every now and then he has to kill a couple of humans. He kills bad people. We cover for him while he covers for us."

"How has Alice never seen anything?"

"We're not sure," I took over. "Jasper helped us there too. He said she only sees something if it changes the status quo. Because we've always...been like this, technically it's not change. The same with Jasper."

"Well, I think that loophole is out."

He was right, of course. Everyone would know by now. Alice would have seen everything.

"You don't have to tell Alice about Jasper," Rosalie stated. "She might not have seen that. You don't have to ruin his life too."

_Wrong words, Rosalie_, I wanted to shout.

He turned slowly to face her. "You think I _want_ to ruin his life? Anyone's life? The only life well and truly ruined here is _mine_, however much you might deny it. It doesn't matter what happens from now on, my life is destroyed. Everything I've ever known or believed was a lie! People I've loved have spent the better part of a century betraying me with one another!"

"What do you want me to say, Emmett?" she asked, resigned. "There isn't a single thing either of us can say to make it better. No amount of apologies will help."

"Are you even sorry? Beyond getting caught?" He shook his head, seemingly answering his own question. "I bet I never see either of you ever again. You'll just run off together, right? I guess this revelation could even be a blessing in disguise for you, really. Now you can finally be together; be _the other half of each other_ without having to concern yourselves with all the secrecy."

"It's not like that," I insisted wildly. "We _are_ sorry. More so than you'd believe possible."

"Yeah?" he asked, looking only at me. "Then you know what you'll do?" He continued without pause. "You'll come back and tell Bella to her face, your daughter too. You'll take whatever Bella and Nessie have to say and then you'll do whatever you're going to do. You owe them that much at least."

"You want us to go back?" Rosalie asked in a small voice, looking at Emmett for the first time since he'd let go of her wrists.

"Oh, not you," he told her, looking her right in the eye. "I don't care what _you_ do. I won't make the mistake of expecting anything decent from you. Besides, no one will need an in depth explanation of your treachery. I think it'll sink in pretty quick."

He turned to leave, once and for all, when Rosalie spoke, "Are you going to tell Alice about Jasper?"

Without turning back he replied, "Of course I am."

* * *

-**Jasper**-

I hadn't gone very far, unwilling as I was to leave at all, but far away enough that I saw Emmett as he left the building. He couldn't sense me as he burst out of the door, sent it flying and made it twenty feet before his knees gave out. He dropped to the ground, dry-heaving like he was being sick. It was broad daylight and people could see, but no one stopped or asked if he was OK. I wanted to go to him and help, but I couldn't. I knew that much. I would wait until he left before going to Rosalie and Edward.

It couldn't be helped. My automatic allegiance was to them, Rosalie especially. She was my sister in every way that mattered and we were bound by our mutual transgressions. I adored Alice, my beautiful Alice...the still point of a turning world, but I knew perfectly well where her loyalties and more importantly where her anger would lie. There was craven self preservation in that decision too, given that it was likely I would be lynched up with Rosalie and Edward for my own crimes. She wasn't going to forgive me anyway, right?

Withdrawing from my thoughts, I watched Emmett pull himself together, long enough to stand. I watched as he walked, much slower than usual, away from the building, pain etched into every sluggish movement. I waited an extra five minutes before returning, just to ensure he didn't have a change of heart. God, it was still a day's drive before he would return home, and I couldn't imagine the agony of that for him.

My phone was ringing again, the eighth time in ten minutes. I glanced at the screen and saw it was Alice again. I ignored it along with the crushing fear and guilt. There were also numerous messages that I didn't dare read.

I couldn't believe it had _**actually happened**_. Part of me genuinely believed that they would never be found out, that it would continue forever the way it always had. In so many ways, our lives were built on the foundation of a deception, which had existed before I'd even known them. A hundred years of tangled lies and truths...unraveled for all to see. It meant imminent change, the death of our old lives.

Even from several blocks away, Rosalie's pain was unavoidable. I felt it like it was my own, carving out a residence in my bones and turning all sound to a high pitched whistle. It increased as I drew closer to her. Then I felt Edward's numb, desensitised version of it. It felt as though he didn't quite understand the whole of it, like he couldn't process it beyond a certain point. I wished that Rosalie had a similar problem, but she didn't. Her pain was unbearable to even sense second hand thus causing me to construct a makeshift wall to keep myself remotely sane.

"Guys," I called out from the mangled front door. "Can I come up?"

Rosalie's shift in emotions was startling. Hearing my voice swiveled her soul splintering agony to something else that left a horrible aftertaste of guilt in my mouth. I heard her whisper my name before they came down the stairs. For the sake of people staring, I went inside.

"Jasper," she said again, rushing down the stairs dangerously fast. "Has he gone?"

I nodded, trying mightily not to flinch at the look of utter despair on her face or at the sheer volume of _feeling_ she was enduring. "Yeah, I saw him leave."

Edward was behind, looking at Rosalie as he spoke to me. "Do they know?"

"They know," I affirmed grimly. As if to solidify the point, my phone buzzed again. Rosalie and Edward stared at it in my pocket, both feeling the same emotion. Terror. A small part of me wanted to ask why they couldn't have heard a phone buzzing earlier, during one of the dozens of times I'd called their cells. Maybe they knew it, too, because they were both staring with dead eyes at the source of the buzzing, inconsolably desolate.

"Carlisle," Rosalie whispered, shaking her head. "Alice, Esme - _Renesme._"

"Don't," Edward said, sounding strangled. "Not yet."

The moment became truly painful, moments of awkward silence that I could bear no more; prompting me to ask, "What are we going to do?"

"Do?" Edward repeated, shaking himself as though from a trance.

"Do we go home or not," Rosalie explained in a dead voice. "Face them or run?"

Each option had its merits, but one was obviously the righteous path while the other was...not so much. I knew what gluttons for punishment they were, knew they would return and face what everyone had to thrown at them. Admittedly, I hated them a little for it; would they never just be happy? Even with all my understanding of them, would I ever truly _understand _them?

If they heard my thought, neither made mention of it. "We should go," Rosalie said. "We should go now."

As I watched my sister, the concern I felt for her went up a few thousand notches. The pain she was experiencing was astounding, yet she maintained an almost normal-looking facade that was fooling no one who knew her well. Her voice was flat, yet full of self loathing and defeat. Ironically enough, even in the middle of such a catastrophe, I couldn't shake the feeling that something worse was coming.

Edward faltered a little. "Rose, I don't think I can."

"We have to," she said utterly without inflection. "We owe them that."

He shook his head. "No, this isn't some minor transgression that requires an explanation and time to heal. They will never forgive us. They won't understand and if they do they'll see that we've been lying to them for as long as we've known them!"

She ground her teeth together and avoided looking at him. "All of which we deserve."

"I can't see their faces, hear their thoughts...no. No, they won't understand!"

Rosalie was becoming frustrated, incredible that she was even capable of it with everything else she was feeling. Not everyone was like her when facing difficulty, though. In the midst of a tidal wave of adversity, she could withstand the crushing water. She had always been the strong one; regardless, of her weakness (for lack of a better word) for Edward. Her one vice.

"Understand? Understand like Jasper did? No, of course they won't! They'll condemn us forever, disown and despise us for the betrayals we've committed. And it's _all deserved_ because that's it's we've done! Running will make it harder for everyone, ourselves included!"

Edward looked at me for the briefest of moments then back to her. "Then I'll go, alone. You go with Jasper, stay away until I come to find you."

She simply shook her head, swinging her bag over her shoulder. It was oddly contrasting to see such a nice handbag on the shoulder of such a disheveled nineteen year old, covered in dust and tear tracks. "No."

"Just no?"

"No. No more trying to protect each other. We're due this, Edward. We've let it go on this long knowing the risks. We have lied to them all, betrayed Emmett and Bella in the worst ways imaginable. We deserve this and that's all there is to it."

"Jasper," Edward said, slightly desperate, trying to appeal to me. "Please, take her away with-"

She whirled on him all of a sudden. "NO! You don't get to be the big hero, not with this, all right? It was Emmett that walked in on us, not Bella. Emmett, _my_ Emmett and he just left here! I have to speak to him again, even if it's the last time. There are other things I didn't get to tell him."

"They're going to hate us," he said, gripping her forearm. "_Carlisle_ is going to hate us."

I couldn't contain the flinch that time, such was her pain. "They're entitled to. We had a century of taking stupid, reckless risks and never being found out. This is our penance, the start of our punishment! You can't protect me from it any more than I could protect you up there! No more brilliant lies, no more last minute deceptions! It's over and done with, time to face the music."

He looked down, hand leaving her arm slowly. He was talking to her using their weird connection, I felt it vibrate. Whatever he said, she couldn't deal with it because she slammed the connection shut and shook her head.

"I don't...I can't right now. We have to go," she said. "We just have to go."

Edward went out first leaving the two of us behind for just a moment. I wanted to say something, _anything_ reassuring but there was nothing, of course. So I took her hand in mine and squeezed it for a second before letting it go. She looked at her hand, dazed and so incredibly young looking. Like she had forgotten she even had a hand.

"Thanks," she whispered. "Stay close?"

I nodded, lump in my throat. "Always."

So began the slow, hellish journey back to a place we could no longer call home.

* * *

_-_**Esme**_-_

All my poor children, so sad and distraught. Such a terrible thing for any mother, by any definition, to see the family being torn apart and not be able to stop it. These thoughts churned restlessly through my system.

I knew I should have tried harder to stop Emmett from going, but he was so determined. Part of me was trying to argue that perhaps it was for the best, in the grand scheme of things. After all, how long could such a monumental secret stay hidden? Yet arguments fell flat when looking at Emmett, having just returned and almost immediately falling into Carlisle's arms. He looked utterly wrecked in every way; bereaved and destroyed.

Carlisle and I had been waiting for him. At my insistence, Alice and Bella were not there with us waiting. Emmett had only called once to say that he was returning and such was the despair in his voice that I couldn't bear for him to be confronted so immediately upon his return. Alice was utterly beside herself as it was and Bella was off the charts; it made sense to stagger the arrivals as best we could. There would be more arrivals soon enough. I knew my eldest two well enough to know they would return, allowing everyone to have their say.

"Oh my darling," I whispered, wrapping my arms around him. Carlisle and I held him close in an incredibly uncharacteristic display of parental love for our son. He needed it. "We're so sorry."

He wept in our arms for a few minutes before seeming to calm enough to stand on his own. He wiped his eyes. I had never seen him cry, not even when he had killed that young girl from so long ago.

"I still can't believe it," he said shaking his head, eyes downcast. "I feel like I've dreamed the whole thing, somehow."

Carlisle gripped his shoulder. "Alice saw it," he told him quietly. "We can't believe it either."

Emmett looked hesitant, yet still broken. "What exactly did Alice see?"

I looked at Carlisle briefly, knowing he was referring to Alice's knowledge of Jasper's involvement. "She saw you come upon Rosalie and Edward...together," Carlisle explained carefully. "She saw parts of the argument, but not much else. She's very confused."

He nodded. "I'll bet."

"She really wants to see you," I told him gently. "As does Bella."

His face crumpled even more so. "God...Bella and Nessie."

"What did they say?" Carlisle asked quietly. "Rosalie and Edward?"

Emmett just shook his head. "I can't go through it all again without speaking to Bella first," he said. "He should be back soon, at least I think he will. He can explain everything to you himself, if that's OK?"

"Of course," I soothed. "Whatever you want, darling."

"Thanks Mom," he said sounding too young. The devastation of this would be far reaching and long lasting, perhaps irreversibly so. It affected each of us, Emmett and Bella in particular and yet I had no real anger towards my eldest two, who I had always intended and purposefully left to their own devices. The conflict of everyone else would be sufficient without me adding to it and I had no real motive to do so anyway. I loved my family, regardless of their actions. Perhaps that was my real flaw, perhaps a real mother would be furious and angry but I could not be.

While lost in my thoughts, Emmett left to go in search of the girls. I watched him go, heartbroken for all my beautiful but deeply troubled children.

* * *

**-Emmett-**

The house had never seemed so empty and silent, almost foreboding. I felt like a ghost, my movements so quiet and muffled by the ringing in my ears. Each step took me closer to the last place I wanted to be, yet I would answer the obligation felt within me. Someone owed Bella the truth, and I would relay it to her. As best as I could, anyway. Knowing it was wrong, I selfishly wanted her to at least partake in the burden which was the branded knowledge and – even worse – images of the two people I (we) loved most in the world, sickeningly intertwined and utterly lost in each other.

But equally, I wanted to protect her from it. I wanted to protect everyone from it, really. Several times on the way home I'd almost gone crazy from trying to figure out ways to tell everyone that it wasn't true, that someone had forced them to do it by threat of death. That really it was the Volturi interfering with them. Or magic, or anything, _anything_ but the truth happened, so that I could contain it; make it imaginary for a while longer. Rosalie would be oh so sorry; Edward would do anything to make it right. I knew that if I asked, they would do literally anything. _If_ I asked, Edward would leave. Rosalie would stay with me, such was their guilt.

_**If.**__ If. If_. Everything subjective.

It was all irrelevant, anyway. Everyone knew . . . well I wasn't sure if Nessie and Jake knew. But mostly everyone knew. There was no containment, no chance of lying or repairing anything that was so utterly broken. I would never have asked anyway. There was no _if_, not really. The simple memory of Edward tenderly redressing Rosalie, looking at her with such concern and protectiveness was enough to turn my stomach.

Too soon, I arrived at Alice's door. I wasn't ready. What was I going to say? What would I reveal and what wouldn't I? There were some things she didn't have to know, right? Details I had seen and would certainly never be able to forget, but that weren't essential to the whole picture.

"Emmett?" Alice called through the door, her voice strained. "Come in, please."

I opened the door and entered the room. Bella and Alice were on the floor which was jarring unto itself. We never needed to sit or rest. Sadly, they lay where Bella had fallen – or collapsed (more likely) – while crying.

Bella looked almost as heartbroken as I felt, and she didn't even know the full story yet. Alice was stroking her hair soothingly, but her face was tight, her eyes hard like flint. Betrayal, deception, anger. Her emotions looked so straightforward and simple, I envied her.

"Is it true?" Bella mumbled quietly, choking on a small sob. For the first time (in a long time), she looked every bit as fragile as she had when we first knew her in Forks. She managed to stand up, shakily. "Emmett, please tell me the truth. Tell me what happened?"

Alice held onto her. They both waited.

This dire situation was not my fault or my doing, but I felt the burden of having to be honest with Bella. A burden that should have been placed squarely at Edward's feet, yet here I stood, having to explain to _his wife_ how he had been cheating on her. Where was the fairness in any of this? What the _fuck_ had I ever done to anyone to deserve this?

"I walked in on them." Better forgotten images and sounds hit me, making me disoriented. "They were having sex."

Bella let out another sob, louder this time. She doubled-over, as if punched. "No, no! I don't understand, Em!" she wailed. "Please, why would they do this?"

I had no answer. _'They're each other's half . . . they loved each other but not quite . . .' _All of their excuses seemed flimsy and sickeningly romantic.

With everything I had tried to stay calm. "They saw me and stopped and then I..." I what? Why wasn't there a way to describe what had happened without making me feel like I wanted to die? "They've been having an affair for a very long time," I settled on.

"How long?" Alice demanded.

Before you, Bells," I told Edward's wife. "Before even me. Almost a hundred years."

Neither Alice nor Bella seemed to know how to respond. '_Welcome to the club_,' I wanted to say. So predictable was the next question, yet I still flinched when asked, knowing I would have to answer it. I felt obligated to answer Bella truthfully.

"Why?" Bella whispered. "Why?" _Why Indeed,_ I concurred.

Yet when it came time to answer, I couldn't. I couldn't validate her question by saying,_ 'they were in love; so in love that they had forced a telepathic connection where one did not naturally belong; so involved in one another that they were almost the same person.' _ I wouldn't say it.

"I don't know," I lied straight-faced. Did that make me the same as them, lying too? Did it make me some sort of twisted accomplice to their betrayal? "But I'm sure they'll say its love or something _like it_."

"Love?" Alice scoffed bitterly. "They can't love, they're incapable of it."

Damn, how I wanted onto her bandwagon. To be at a point where I could scathe and hate openly, bitch and moan and despise them. I wasn't anywhere near there, though Alice was the only one remotely capable of being able to do so thus far.

"I just can't believe it," Bella muttered, two more tears rolling down her cheeks. Her disbelief mirrored my own, despite having seen very concrete proof. We were the same, cast aside and deceived by two such masterful liars.

Before realising my own actions, I pulled her into a fierce hug. She returned it, crying into my shoulder. "I know," I said, stroking her hair. "I know."

Bella may not have been my absolute favourite person in the world, but she was my sister in many respects and certainly not someone I would ever wish this kind of pain on. I felt protective of her, wanting to comfort her best I could even though I knew there was no real way to do so.

She drew back, causing me to, also. "Are they coming back?" Her voice was small, muted.

"Edward might. I don't think _she_ will. I told Edward he should come back, explain himself to both you and Nessie at least, but who knows?"

"They're both coming," Alice inserted. A string of panic plucked in my chest. "Soon."

"Both?" I echoed, never thinking she'd dare return. She was crazier than I thought. "Really?"

Grimly, she nodded. "In the next half-hour, I think. It's difficult to know for sure. Jasper's with them."

I shut my eyes briefly. _Jasper_. Another sharp betrayal.

"I'm not going to ask about Jasper," Alice told me. "Don't worry about anything having to do with that."

"I don't know much." I purposefully evasive.

"It's fine, I'll ask him myself."

I just nodded awkwardly. "Thank you for telling me," Bella said after a moment. "I appreciate it and I'm sorry you had to go through everything in New York alone."

Her voice had become detached and steady, way too fast. Possibly, she was in some kind of shock. I decided to stay close for as long as she needed, keep an eye on her.

"What do you want to do?" I asked Bella. "When they come back?"

She blinked slowly. Definitely shock. "I have no idea," she admitted. "What do you think I should do?"

It wasn't my decision, yet I could see Bella needed someone to make the hard choices for her at this point.

"Maybe let Edward explain some things, _if you want_. If not, then I'll make sure he doesn't come anywhere near you."

She nodded. "No, it's OK. I'd like to see him, hear what he has to say about...things."

I looked to Alice, noticing she clearly saw Bella's state, too. She gave a small nod letting me know she too would stay with her, watching.

There was nothing left to say, really. The real answers had to come from those at fault. The only thing left to do was wait now our _significant others _to arrive. And as it turned out, the wait wasn't very long.

* * *

**-Rosalie-**

I believed _all_ life was made up of moments. Single, individual moments that expired as they're born. I knew this, truly I did. It was something I told myself often, when something bad happened. All life is singular moments and shall _all_ pass. Everything passes. If one moment was bad, one need only hold on because the next one might not be. I'd thought I had a good understanding of it, good enough to see me through some seriously bad times, anyway.

Yet time often makes a mockery of learned things and as such, I was proved wrong. Life might have been made of individual moments, but what happened when said single moment coloured every one thereafter? When one bad moment infected all others from thence? That one moment – Emmett seeing us together. Watching Emmett watching us, I had witnessed something inside of him die at the sight. That moment would affect every moment in my existence from now on. I concluded, (from that one moment) there would never be good moments ever again. There could never be hope for them, not even the _desire_ to hope for a good moment. The punishment was deserved; I knew it in every fiber of my being. From the very inception of Edward and I.

How stupid it seemed now, thinking we would never be found out. Such arrogance and confidence in our deceptive abilities; and even to an extent, the blindness of those we loved. The lies all felt so incredibly unnecessary, hindsight making it patently clear what had always been unknowable to us. _Shouldn't have lied. Should have been honest. Shouldn't have involved others. _Still, no point in retrospect just for the sake of it, was there?

There were more important matters at hand.

Like the door before me.

It was a really nice door: dark-green painted wood, the number 24 on it. I noticed all the minutia, which I had never taken the time to observe and catalogue before. With everything surmountable in front of me, it seemed appropriate to study a door I had entered in and out of hundreds of times. And now behind it, more singular moments were about to arise, so painful that my mind was grappling for anything that could distract.

My family was behind the door, or what _used_ to be my family, anyway.

No good moment would ever happen again, all would bear the taint of the first bad one – Emmett watching us. Such was my collection of thoughts that swirled chaotically. Still, anything was better than thinking about what Edward had said to me in our minds, back in New York. It took everything I had to shut him out and keep him from seeing the answer to his questions.

_Later_, I told myself. _Later_.

My hesitation was almost matched by Edward and Jasper's. They stood near to me, watching the door the same as I did, wondering what to do next. We had keys of course, but should we knock? Acknowledgment of the fact we undoubtedly no longer belonged here? Should we simply let ourselves in? Inconsequential moments that never really mattered before, now seemed unanswerable.

The wonderfully distracting decision was taken from our hands when the door opened slowly and just enough that I could see a familiar face. Esme.

My heart broke even more, or what was left of it anyway. Esme, our Mom who loved us so much, who had helped us through such awful times.

She looked incredibly sad, and all I could do was wait, unable to prepare myself for what she had to say.

She opened the door fully and I saw to my cowardly relief that she appeared to be alone for the moment. No Carlisle, which was odd.

"I'm so sorry," she said so quietly I could have (and probably did) imagine it. "I wish I could do something."

I blinked slowly; it was difficult to understand anything anymore. Edward gasped a little before saying, "You knew?" She nodded once, again so minutely it might not have happened at all. "No," he said, shocked. "There's no way, I would have known."

She smiled sadly. "Oh my poor darlings, there's a lot you don't know, I'm afraid."

Esme had known, possibly for some time. Did that mean...? Did she not hate us as much as I thought she might? _Why wouldn't my mind work anymore?_ I couldn't even process the smallest of basic thoughts.

Taking a deep breath she said, "I love you all and I'm terribly sorry this had to happen." I could see the truth of her statement written on her face. "Everyone is here except Nessie and Jacob. They don't know yet; no-one has called them, anyway."

Edward nodded shakily, sickly relieved that his daughter did not yet know what his wife and all our family did. His relief was short-lived, I sensed Carlisle's approach behind Esme.

Without really taking it in, I followed Jasper inside, sensing perhaps that if he didn't, we wouldn't be able to enter at all.

The house smelled of home, of all the people and things I loved most in the world. I had destroyed it all with lies and betrayal. Emmett was there, I could smell him, too. _This couldn't be happening_, and yet it was, my mind screamed while scrabbling again for purchase of any kind.

Carlisle (my creator, my friend, my _Father_) appeared grim, hurt and distant in a way I had never seen. It aged him greatly, made him look almost gray. That could have been me seeing things in black and white, of course.

"Emmett and the others are upstairs," he spoke, utterly without inflection. "He said you would explain to us."

Edward was shaking. He had loved Carlisle so much and for so long; and to see that look in our creator's eyes was killing him.

Esme closed the door behind us, and I took the opportunity to clear my throat to speak. Everything seemed stuck.

"We've been together for a long time," I started but immediately wished I hadn't. It was the wrong thing to say, of course it was. What would be the right way to begin such a conversation? _We're so sorry? We never meant it to happen_? It was futile and insulting, not to mention lies. Still, I regretted saying it all the same. "Since before Emmett. We lied to everyone and kept it a secret." There, the truth in all its tainted glory.

"This entire time? All those years, Rosalie . . . Edward?" he breathed, looking like he simply couldn't believe it. "How?"

"We were careful," I said again. Edward seemed unable to speak at all, so I would speak for him. It was something small I could do for him, like how he had done up my buttons when I couldn't. I didn't know what was keeping him from collapsing to the floor and crying, but something was and it prevented him from say a word. "We told very elaborate lies and created opportunities to be together, without anyone knowing."

Carlisle was silent a long time before replying, "In time I might understand that, but I will never understand why you brought other people into it. All the lies and dishonesty aside, how can there be forgiveness for involving Bella and Emmett?"

Edward was about to respond, incredibly; but the words became stuck in his throat. I knew he felt what I had. Emmett's presence, once again. But not alone, _oh no_. Alice and Bella were with him. Standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at us.

And for all my great bravery, I couldn't look. I couldn't see their faces, I just couldn't.

"I can't believe you came back!" Emmett's disgusted and furious voice broke through my fear. There was no need to ask who he was addressing. "How _dare_ you come back?"

My voice was nowhere to be found. Graciously Jasper spoke for us, "We'll face whatever you have to say, answer any questions you might have." It sounded so simple and straightforward that I inappropriately wanted to laugh. My emotions were everywhere and nowhere, certainly not anywhere stable. It would have been a very bad idea; and besides the situation was anything but simple.

"We have a lot of questions," Alice spoke first; her voice tight. "About everything." I still didn't have the courage to look up, but I could hear as she came down the stairs, leaving Bella and Emmett standing there.

Before I could make heads or tails of the situation, she came straight at me, ignoring everyone but me.

Everything happened too quickly for me to even comprehend. She went to slap me directly across the face. I saw it peripherally; her hand swinging back, palm flattened. I was going to let her, of course. Part of me genuinely welcomed it. But then a hand reached out to stop her and I was too late to stop it from happening, though I should have known. The sound of skin on skin resounded too loudly in my ears, spinning my mind in every direction. His hand catching her wrist.

Words and emotions caught in my throat as he spoke, "_Don't_, Alice."

I couldn't breathe, struck dumb by the action that I knew was reflexive to him but was utterly damning to us in every way. Everyone was frozen, staring at what had just happened.

Edward dropped her wrist and moved to stand ever so slightly in front of me. I wanted to stop him, but what was the point? How could anything be any worse, anyway? His actions concerning me were unstoppable as mine were when it came to him. His protectiveness even in the face of our family and our blatant transgressions...it made what had to happen later all the harder to stomach.

I finally dared to look up and into the face I wanted to avoid the most. Startling realisation and confusion broke over Bella's face. She looked exactly like Emmett when he had first realised that what Edward and I had spanned deeper than sex. It went to the very core of who we were. Edward _instinctively_ protected me and it was clear as day, now.

Bella, and everyone else for that matter, could see us exactly as we were, raw and undisguised.

The pain radiating from only her eyes was too much. I couldn't stand to see her face, see the slow and unstoppable understanding of his action. She looked at Edward then and I realised he was_ still_ standing in front of me, protecting me from everyone. I had to make him stop.

_'Edward, stop. She's entitled to hit me if she wants.'_

_'No, she's not. No-one is.'_

'_You have to move. Please.'_

I grit my teeth, acknowledging that he wasn't going to listen. Eyes cast downward, I very gently placed me hand on his side and pushed him just a fraction back, stepping forward so we were side by side. The small touch reassured him perfectly, as I knew it would and he seemed to snap out of his protective stance for the time being, at least.

Everyone stared at us utterly shocked, except Emmett. He looked sickened if resigned, but then he had seen that little show before, hadn't he?

"You disgust me," Alice spoke, again the first one to voice what she felt. Not that her face didn't do a good enough job already. "Both of you disgust me!"

I couldn't look at her, so I just waited to see if she would hit me again. When she didn't, I took a breath for the first time in minutes. I could still feel how tense Edward was, even though I was working hard to limit and control our connection. His mind had gone to a place of basic simplicity, for the sake of not collapsing perhaps. He was thinking slowly and controlled, avoiding dangerous areas like _Carlisle_ or _Bella_. I wanted to stay with him, make sure he could cope but it was useless. This was something we both had to do alone.

"Emmett," I whispered, "Can I please talk to you; just for five minutes?"

He laughed at that. "No, you really can't."

I knew he was reeling from having to witness the intimate interaction between Edward and myself. His voice sure gave credence to that notice. I nodded in understanding, accepting his denial. I knew there were things Edward still had to do: like speak to Bella.

So before my mind and soul literally imploded (from the inside out), I decided to go and get my things, and then wait outside to see if Emmett would come. I was pretty certain he would, but there was no way to trust my instincts at that point.

Silently and in a daze, I made my way past them all, feeling their eyes watching my retreat to the room Emmett and I shared – or used to. No one said anything.

Without taking much time to allow memories to bombard me or slow my progress, I ignored most things, going only for that which I needed: like clothes and legal documents. Voices filtered upstairs but I couldn't process anything besides the ringing in my ears.

When I realised I had packed everything needed, I was at a loss for what to do next. There were hundreds of objects I could have taken, but almost all of them reminded me of Emmett. Plus, there was no room in the two bags I had. Most likely he would destroy the rest, or so I supposed.

The thing which gave me the most pause to leave, came into my view; my desk, so many names carved into it. Such sadness etched into its every surface. That, too, would most likely be destroyed along with everything else that had to do with the last century of my existence. Nothing I could do to stop it, of course.

I touched it one last time, tracing over everything I had craved. This brought me close to my very breaking point.

More screams could be heard and I couldn't withstand that, too, selfish as I was.

Maybe I was a coward or _selfish_. I wasn't mentally disputing the fact. But possibly, _possibly_, I was simply tired. As vampires we couldn't tire too much physically, but my emotional limitations had been reached. Even the strongest of the strong have their emotional and mental breaking points . . . and I was close to reaching mine. So whether it be cowardly or emotional fatigue, I reached the limit. It wasn't for me to decide any longer. Too many more important things were calling for my attention.

With little hesitation, I grabbed my bags and went to the window. I opened it and threw the bags out, before climbing out myself.

.

It was a beautiful night; cold and clear: crisp. The sky was a soothing inky colour peppered with stars, and lit in one corner by a crescent moon. The darkness was soothing, as though I could melt away into it and become invisible. It called to my aching soul so beautifully, whispering so enticingly.

My bags and I went to the garage. I unlocked my car and stored everything away. When everything I had left in the world was stowed away, I drove the car out of the garage and onto the drive-way, parking it close by.

Leaving the car and heading back toward the house, I stood in the yard and decided that I would wait outside. like the absolute _fucking coward_ that I was. I thought of going back inside but couldn't. I simply couldn't.

After twenty-six minutes of waiting and before I could give up completely, I started to walk away. My plan that I had been trying to hide from Edward ever since New York didn't include leaving with anyone. He had been trying to reassure me that no matter what, we would be together when this was all over and I'd had to shut him out before he saw the truth. It always fell to me to make the hard decisions for us both and he wasn't ready for it yet. Just the thought of it made me want to be sick, but I held myself together somehow.

Emmett wasn't coming; I didn't know why I was remotely surprised. He didn't owe me anything and I still expected him to act like he did. I knew I should just wait for Edward so I could explain things to him, but I was desperate to avoid it. Maybe I could exceed even my own expectations of how much of a coward I was and leave there and then.

Gripping my car keys hard and caught in the midst of a difficult decision, I saw Emmett coming out of the back door. Towards me. My breath caught in my chest, unsure of what to expect.

He said, "Five minutes, then."

* * *

_**Authors Note**: So, there it is. No words can be begin to describe how difficult this was or how sorry I am about how long it took. I literally had the first half of this chapter all done and I was really happy with it about two days after I posted the first chapter and then this barrage of hate and nastiness came out of nowhere and I just totally lost my confidence. It was only through the amazing help, beta-ing and co-writing of **SunnyOrange** that this chapter a) even got finished and b) is so well put together. She is incredible. _

_I really hope that this did justice to something that I know a lot of people have been waiting for. If there was something missing or something you wanted to see but didn't, please let me know. I'm totally open to requests or ideas. There are going to be a further two chapters after this, four in total. I will warn ahead (not that anyone really needs it) but it's going to be heartbreaking and very, very angsty. But if you know me then bear with me and trust me. I would never do wrong by you, my lovely people ;)_

_So enormous thanks to my Beta (co-writer – that scene with the slap and the buttons, that was all her) SunnyOrange. To the brilliant, lovely Twiolic, gosspigirl111, sexysiren1981 and everyone else who reviewed with their kindness and support. Thank you so, so much! _

_The next chapter, barring more death threats, will be up much sooner than the last. _

_All my love, _

_Bex_

_x x x _


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